A YOUNG couple with a young son and a baby on the way have been left effectively homeless after refusing to live in a hovel-like council flat.

Mustafa Shah and his pregnant wife, Rizwana, turned down a filthy council flat in Capworth Street, Leyton, that had exposed electrical wires hanging from the ceiling, a broken toilet, bare plaster walls and mouldy floors.

The council has now refused to offer them anywhere else to live because they did not want to take the squalid flat.

Mr Shah, 28, who works as a driver, is sleeping in his car outside his brother-in-law's house, where his expectant wife and one-year-old son are living.

He is seeking legal advice and proposes to take action against the council if it does not find another home for them.

Mr Shah said they could not take the fourth-floor flat because his wife, Rizwana, 29, is 12 weeks pregnant and has been warned by her doctor not to exert herself or she could lose her baby.

The block of flats does not have a lift, and she is reluctant to risk her pregnancy as she has already had one miscarriage.

Mr Shah, who has lived in Walthamstow all his life, said: "The flat was in a terrible, terrible state. I went to the council and said I wasn't taking it.

"Up until then we'd been in a bed and breakfast place that the council had found us, but after we refused the offer of the flat we were thrown out of the B&B.

"Since last month I've been sleeping in my car."

The council, which has a 70-year housing waiting list, this week said it is its policy not to re-house people who have turned down the offer of a property which was not to their liking.

A spokesman said: "We offered them a home in their area, a home which would have benefited from substantial investment in the coming years. We did our absolute best. We now have no more duty to these people."

July 11, 2002 10:00