A mother pregnant with her tenth child has demanded a bigger council house in the countryside, despite raking in almost £30,000 a year in state handouts.
Iona Heaton, 43, said her four-bedroom home in Blackburn is too small for her enormous family and complained that the property is cold, damp and festering with mould.
The mother of nine shares the terraced house with her boyfriend Paul Brown, 45, and her children Kaiden, nine months, Zak, two, Keegan, three, Kian, four, Elle, six, Kain, seven, Jade, 16 and Shannon, 17.
She also has a 24-year-old son, Sean, who does not live at home, and she is three months pregnant with her tenth child.
Now she and Mr Brown want housing association firm Twin Valley, which runs the terrace along with Darwen Council, to move her to a larger 'more child friendly' property.
The family receive £575 a week in child benefits and disability allowances - as daughter Elle has epilepsy.
This is despite the fact that Mr Brown takes home £1,000 a month from his job as a metal polisher.
They would need to be earning a combined salary of £41,000 to take home the £30,000 a year they receive just in benefits and allowances.
The housing association said it had spent £4,000 on fixing the problems and visited the property 25 times.
Mrs Heaton said today: 'All the kids have asthma now, and we’re constantly back and forth to the doctors for antibiotics. I have to have five children sleeping in my bedroom with me because their rooms are so freezing and damp.
'Paul and I argue all the time because it’s so stressful living in a house like this. Because nothing gets done, I’ve asked to move, but they say we can’t because they haven’t got a house big enough for all of us.
'I like having a big family. None of my family speaks to me any more because I have so many children - but it’s their loss. It’s not about getting more money - if we didn’t cope, then we wouldn’t have kids.
