CHURCH volunteers have stepped in to find a new home for a Blackburn family whose house is under siege from damp.

Mum-of-three Donna Jamieson revealed how Blackburn Diocesan workers promised to find her somewhere else to live after the damp became so bad at her Coleridge Street home that a crop of mushrooms sprouted from the walls.

Officers from Blackburn with Darwen Council branded the terraced house as unfit for human habitation.

Donna was told that pipes left leaking by burglars who stole a heating boiler from an empty house next door were to blame.

Her landlord and the owner of the house promised to sort the mess out, but Donna wants to get her family into a new home as quickly as possible.

She claims it was only when she spotted the owner of the empty house, who did not respond to council requests to let investigators in, that anything was done.

"I saw him coming out of it yesterday," she said. "I collared him and he said he would sort it out.

"But this can't be sorted with a bit of disinfectant and some new wallpaper. We are all suffering, the kids get infections and all my furniture is ruined."

The family sleep at the house but spend their days with relatives, to avoid the damp.

According to Donna a member of the diocese's Board for Social Responsibility, which works with families in East Lancashire, has promised to take up her case.

"A woman told me she's looking out for a property. She said they will try to get me anything that comes up in the next couple of weeks."