Woodside residents who have to live with their toilet and bathroom in the kitchen, have been told their housing conditions are unacceptable, but the council does not have the necessary funds to carry out the work.

Council housing officials visited the homes in the estate to see for themselves the daily nightmare residents have to endure with a house layout where their toilet is one end of the kitchen and the bath is the other.

However councillor David Simms, cabinet member for housing, revealed that although the “conditions are bad and do need to be addressed” under the government’s Decent Home Standard scheme, the Woodside homes – which last had a mini modernisation in the 1970s – would be considered to be ‘decent’.

Cllr Simms said: “Under the decent home standards, what is decent for the government is not decent for our tenants.

“Under the government guidelines as long as the bathrooms and the kitchens are working and hygenic then they are fine.

“I don’t think these homes are acceptable, but anything we can do is confined by finances as money is extremely tight.

“But there are about 500 properties across the borough which all have similar problems to Woodside where the bathrooms are downstairs.

“We have already started moving the bathroom upstairs when the tenants move out.”

However Woodside tenants spokesman, Judith Lee, said: “I would like to know how many of these 500 homes are like ours and have their bathrooms in the kitchen.

“There may be 500 with downstairs bathrooms, but I doubt very much if they are all like this estate.

“We are going to keep on attending area committee meetings to find out more answers. We feel like we have been ignored for long enough now. We have waited for 37 years.”

At a full council meeting on February 22, councillors agreed a £33.7m budget which looks to replace around 5,000 kitchens and 3,500 bathrooms in homes considered to be non-decent, over the next five years.

Cllr Simms added: “We are setting up a programme which is looking at addressing these problems, but it will take about two to three years.

“I can’t give any exact guarantees or time scales. But this modernisation will cost several thousand pounds to move them all, and we just haven’t got it.

“It is a long and slow process and we are where we are and we are having to work within confined budgets.

“We are doing something and I will do what I can to alleviate these issues where possible.”