My mother is in desperate need of advice and help with regards to her property being damaged. As much as I've tried to help her with this we seem to keep hitting brick walls and we don't know where to go from here. It's upsetting her so much and I'm worried about the detrimental effect that all this is having on her health and wellbeing as well as her property. My mother is even more worried because legal action is usually expensive and she is not in a position financially to be able to do this.

This is what has happened so far, in as few points as possible:

1. She lives just over the border into Scotland so would come under Scottish law.

2. She noticed that her bedroom was showing signs of damp and smelled fusty.

3. On inspection we found the carpet under the bed was black with mould, there was a huge mould patch behind one of the wardrobes, and the bed was covered in damp and mould underneath. We had to dispose of them.

4. After a closer inspection we noticed that the areas in the room weren't just damp they were wet.

5. We phoned the insurance company who said we would need to identify what was the cause of the wet/damp before they could do anything.

6. It took us a while, but eventually we managed to get things like the party wall checked out, and the adjoining roofline between our house and the house next door. Both of these proved to be fine. This left only one thing, the road and pavement drains outside our house. We even got a builder in who said that rain water from outside was not ‘getting away’ properly, because of the neglected drains, and eventually it’s managed to find a way into our house.

7. My Mother has had on-going issues with the local authority and trying to get them to clean out the pavement and road drains in front of our house. The pavement drain didn’t work properly because it was choked with debris and whenever there was a heavy downpour the water had nowhere to go except towards our house and create a bit of a small lake outside our front door so we couldn’t get out of the house. If it was really bad both the front and the back doors were surrounded with water.

8. Despite frequent phone calls and letters to our local council, and its representatives, nothing happened.

9. My Mother had another phone call with the local authority to try and get the drains fixed. This got a little bit heated and she ended up putting the phone down on them after stating to them that ‘they had won, she gives up, yet another council tax payer beaten into submission’.

10. The next day, a team from the council turned up and cleared out the channel drain on the pavement.

11. Two days after that another team turned up and started pumping out the road drains. My mother went to speak to them and during the conversation she was told ‘they hadn’t seen anything like this. The pumping wagon has already been away to be emptied three times. They had pumped out over 400 gallons from the road drain outside our house’. They also told her the drains were completely silted up, unable to take any water away, and weren’t functioning properly.

12. After discovering this, my mother phoned the council and asked for a meeting with them. During this she was told again that they knew they had problems with the road drains on our road and were going to investigate and would get back in touch.

13. Around 18 months had passed between our initial discovery of damp and this point.

14. The council didn’t get back in touch. After waiting over 2 months we sent letters of complaint to the heads of several departments within the council, and we also sent letters to local councillors and the chief executive.

15. There was not much in the way of response except that we received a few ‘we have received your communication’ letters.

16. After another long wait, we were told, during a discussion with a council employee, that some investigations had already taken place which showed the drains weren’t working properly, they were badly neglected and in a poor state of repair, and in some areas were collapsed. They were also unable to identify where they road drains ran to, but it looked as if they just soaked away under the houses on the road.

17. Because all the road drains are blocked and not working, apart from the one outside our house, all the water runs to the drain outside our house as well as under our house.

18. We have now hit a wall of inactivity. Meanwhile my mother’s property is deteriorating rapidly and the damp and wet is spreading throughout the house. We strongly suspect there could well be issues of subsidence too.

19. My mother contacted the insurance company again in desperation. She told them we know what the cause is and explained it to them. They said they wouldn’t do anything until the root cause was fixed but they said they would send a loss adjuster.

20. My mother also contacted the legal assistance department of the insurance, who eventually said they couldn’t help because it would be action against a local authority and we aren’t covered for that.

21. When the loss adjuster, from the insurance company came, he was dropping hints about it not being accidental damage but that it was more gradual damage and it may be that the insurance won’t pay out.

22. The loss adjuster also they said that the local authority should be fixing this problem and putting right all the damage that has been caused.

23. The problem we have, is the council aren’t/won’t/don’t seem to be doing anything and we are powerless to do anything else because everyone is saying its someone else’s problem. Meanwhile the longer this is dragging the worse my mother’s house is getting.

24. We have some photographs and some video footage to support the above.

Please help !