A HOUSING association has relented and agreed to foot a pest control bill after hearing how a terrified pensioner’s home was overrun with mice.

Sheila Smith, 78, of Waterfield Close, Belvedere, rang News Shopper in despair after being told she would have to foot the £100 bill to rid her two-bedroom terraced home of mice.

She said the mice arrived in her house about eight weeks ago, when she spotted droppings in her kitchen.

She said: “Then I found a dead one behind the cooker and saw them running across the kitchen surfaces.”

Mrs Smith bought some poison and laid it in trays around the house.

She found more of the dead rodents in her hallway and under a kitchen cupboard.

Mrs Smith said: “I was lying in bed at night and I could hear them.

“So I put more poison trays down in my bedroom and the front bedroom.”

After finding yet more dead mice in the front bedroom, she called in her landlord, Orbit South housing association.

The housing officer checked the house and Mrs Smith says he found a hole in the ceiling of the airing cupboard.

She explained: “He said the mice had gnawed through from the loft.

“There is a gap under the door and they must have escaped into the rest of the house from there.”

By this time, Mrs Smith was struggling to keep the situation under control and had four poison trays in the front bedroom, which is not generally in use.

She said: “I think they may have the run of the room and I am terrified to go in there.”

Orbit told her it was her responsiblity to hire a pest control company to deal with the problem.

She said: “I haven’t got the money to pay.”

The last straw came when Mrs Smith found mice droppings in her bed and a live one in the bath.

She stopped up all the gaps under the upstairs doors and retreated downstairs, where she is sleeping on the sofa.

Now too terrified to use the bathroom, she goes to her daughter’s house to shower.

Mrs Smith, who has lived in the house for more than 18 years told News Shopper: “I cannot live here anymore “I am so desperate now, I just feel like I could walk out and leave everything behind.”

But on Monday Orbit South relented and has agreed to pay for its pest control company to visit Mrs Smith’s home and bait it, as well as giving her advice on how to keep mice out of the house in future.

A spokeswoman said Orbit South had already arranged for a contractor to fill in the holes where the mice were getting in.

She added: "Under the terms of Mrs Smith's tenancy, pest control is her responsibility, but we were extremely concerned by her distress .”