Family of 8 sharing 1 bedroom
‘Please let us have a bigger home’ A family of eight are begging for a new home, after reaching bursting point in their one-bedroom flat.
Maggie and Gavin Flisher and their six children are squeezed into the Park Wood property without hope of a move as council bosses have barred them for applying for anything smaller than a four-bedroom house.
“The four beds are like gold dust. I’ve been told I’m a main priority but then they are given to someone else. I have been in this circle for nearly four years now. I have been bidding. I have been doing all that I can but I’ve got nowhere,” said the hardpressed mum.
Mrs Flisher, 26, has even asked to be sterilised to stop her family growing further - but doctors turned her down for being too young.
A family of eight living in a one bedroom flat are begging the council for a new home.
Maggie Flisher, 26, her husband Gavin, 30, and their six children are living a cramped existence squeezed into the four-room Park Wood property.
But Maidstone council has said she cannot bid to move to a three-bed home, because they would still be overcrowded.
Instead, she must wait for the council’s rare four or more bed properties to become available.
So when it comes to bedtime, Lacieann, eight, Elektra, six, and Gavin junior, five, sleep in the only bedroom, while twoyear-old Lilyrose and Maggie bed down on a sofabed in the sitting room; with threemonth-old twins Martinjames and Paris Nicola in their moses basket, and unemployed dad Gavin, 30, kipping wherever he can find space.
Their Brishing Lane home is so crowded that the family pay to keep many of the children’s toys into storage.
Mrs Flisher, who has six siblings, said she had not intended to have so many children but had been let down time and time again by various different contraceptions.
She has even asked to be sterilised, but doctors refused, saying she was too young.
Now, the hard-working mum, who moved into the property alone in 2003, says she fights a never-ending battle trying to keep the home clean and tidy.
“The four-bed homes are like gold dust. I’ve been told I’m a main priority but then they are given to someone else.”
“I have been in this circle for three, nearly four years now. I have been doing all that I can but I’ve got nowhere,” she said.
The couple were initially told they would be rehoused in 2005 after Lacieann was born, and again in 2006 following Elektra’s arrival. But after Lilyrose came along, the ban on bidding for three-bed properties was in force.
Mrs Flisher’s midwife, health visitor and even MP Hugh Robertson, have all written to the authorities about the family’s plight.
The family have also instructed a solicitor, but changes in legal aid this year meant any action had to be abandoned.
In the meantime, she has asked to put a second set of bunk beds in the bedroom so that all four older children could sleep there, but has been told this would be a fire hazard.
Perched on the sofa in the cluttered sitting room, Mrs Flisher says she has considered throwing out her cabinet, which holds treasured ornaments and photos, to make way for a bed.
There is no table and no room for the family to eat in the kitchen.
But she said: “It doesn’t get me down because I’m used to it now. It’s hard because the children are always fighting. My Lacieann says ‘I want my own room’ and Gavinjunior is fed up with having a pink and yellow room – he wants a blue one.”
The family say they are prepared to move elsewhere in Maidstone and would take the older children out of Tree Tops Academy, which is across the road from their home, if necessary.
She said: “I don’t care where it is as long as I can get a move.”