Mother raised children in squalor and filth

Neighbours reported a vile smell coming from the terrace house in Bridlington where officers from Humberside Police found garbage spilling out of bin liners, faeces smeared across walls and festering tins of cat food littering the floor.

The house, on a quiet street in the seaside resort, had been rented by a 37-year-old mother, who lived there with her two children for more than two years.

Landlord Gary McNicholas said the tenant owed almost £4,000 in rent when she fled the property with her daughters at the end of last week.

He and his partner Sara Tanner were not legally allowed to enter the house without their tenants’ permission, so had no idea of the horrors that lay behind the front door.

Mr McNicholas, 38, said: “You have to see it to believe it, it’s a real eye-opener. I have been a landlord for 16 years and own eight properties and in all this time I have never come across anything as shocking as this. There just aren’t the words to describe it.”

He estimated that the cost of the clean-up would be up to £10,000, the same amount that he had spent on the property, including fitting a new kitchen and bathroom, before the tenant moved in.

Every room in the three-bedroom, three-storey house was left teeming with rubbish built up over many months, animal faeces littered the carpet and the toilet and bathroom walls were daubed in excrement.

All but one of the doors in the house had been ripped off the hinges, and the one remaining door had been badly damaged – while a gaping hole has opened up in the ceiling of the upstairs bedroom.

In recent months, neighbours had complained about the number of cats roaming around the house and the putrid smell coming from it.

Humberside Police are investigating and the woman has been reported to social services.