I’m a welfare queen but my four-bed council house is just too small – people in larger homes should give them up to me

BENEFITS Queen Marie Buchan loved having children, adoring every moment of being a new mum.

She loved it so much she’s had a staggering eight children and has largely supported them by living on benefits as she was worried they’d feel neglected if she worked full time.

Marie Buchan says that she has nowhere near enough space for her family in her four-bed council houseCredit: BPM

She argues that people with larger houses should over to give them upCredit: BPM

And despite having a four-bedroom housing association property in Selly Oak, a suburb of Birmingham, with a large garden, she’s spent the last six years desperately trying to get the council to rehome them because of her cramped conditions.

Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, single mum Marie, 42, who’s only worked sporadically as a carer since having children, says, “Our house might have four bedrooms, but it’s not enough, the bedrooms are absolutely tiny, we’ve barely got room to move.

“We’re constantly on top of each other, sometimes I feel I don’t have room to breathe. Every so often I go and sit in the car just so I’ve got some space.

“And we’ve only got one bathroom between us so it’s really hard to get up and out in the morning.

“We’ve had to enforce a strict ten-minute rule for the bathroom. We need at least one more and preferably another two bedrooms.”

TOO MANY KIDS

Marie’s huge brood certainly bucked the trend, the birth rate in Britain has been steadily falling and now it’s at its lowest levels since records began in 1939.

Gone are the days when it was 2.4 children it’s now 1.7 and the reason most often cited for women not having larger families is that they can’t afford them, due to the cost of living, precarious job market and soaring costs of childcare.

However Marie admits, “It’s true that I shouldn’t have had so many children, but then again nobody should tell someone they can’t have children.

“I always wanted a big family when I was growing up and I didn’t imagine this is how we’d be living and what a struggle it would be. I thought it would be easy enough.

“I understand that people will read this and think if you can’t afford to have children and house them then you need to stop having them.

I live in a council house but earned £17k this month

“And I agree with them in principle and don’t really understand why I did continue.

“If we didn’t have help from the Government then I would have had to stop I suppose.

“Obviously it isn’t impossible to have children and work, plenty of people do it. But I couldn’t make ends meet as a carer and I wanted to be there for my kids.

“I love being a mum and loved having babies, it’s hard to explain but they’re just so cute and they can’t answer you back when they’re tiny.

“And I liked the thought of having plenty of children to look after me when I got old. I don’t think I ever thought about the reality of having nine growing people living in a small house, that they would be independent and have different views and all the arguments that come from being squeezed into a small house.

“Though I do realise we are lucky to have a roof over our heads at all.”

CRAMMED IN

Marie’s eight children – Tia, 23, Leah, 22, La Toya, 19, Joshua, 18, Alisha, 15, Mikayla, 13, Amelia, 11, and Olivia, 10 – all lived in the house, along with Tia’s 18-month-old son up until a few weeks ago.

But Tia and her son recently moved into a two-bedroom council flat a few miles away.

Marie says, “It took Tia two years to be rehoused into a lovely flat but even without her and my grandson we are so squashed up.

“The youngest three all sleep in with me, with Olivia sharing my bed and the other two in a bunkbed.

“There’s barely room to move in the bedroom and we have to keep our clothes in boxes under the bed.

“Joshua has his own room as he’s the only boy and now Tia’s gone, Leah has her own room while La Toya and Alisha share. We will reconfigure it soon so at least one of the girls is out of my bedroom.

“We all find it hard to sleep and I worry about their school work suffering, someone’s always on tech keeping other people awake, I might start turning of off the Wi-Fi at night soon.

“When I accepted the house I was told it would be temporary. But we’ve been trying to move for the last six years and there are no properties big enough for all of us. It’s annoying that the council allowed so many people to buy their houses.

“There are some gorgeous six-bedroom houses nearby, that people bought and now they don’t need all those bedrooms, when we do desperately.

“They should move into smaller properties and free those ones up.

“It’s hard for the children, they can’t do ordinary things like having their friends for sleepovers and there’s no privacy. And we don’t want to move out of the area because they’re settled in their school.”

Marie also mourns the lack of a dining room as there isn’t anywhere for them to have a family meal. Though she admits that their kitchen and living room are a fair size.

How to apply for a council house

To apply for a council home, you need to fill out and hand in an application to your local authority.

To find your local authority, simply use the Government's council locator tool on its website.

Who is eligible for council housing?

You are eligible to apply for council housing if you are a British citizen living in the UK providing have not lived abroad recently.

Each council has its own local rules about who qualifies to go on the housing register in its area, but it is based on "points" or a "banding" system.

For example, you’re likely to be offered housing first if you:

are homeless
live in cramped conditions
have a medical condition made worse by your current home
are seeking to escape domestic violence

Once you are high enough on a council's waiting list, it will contact you when a property is available.

Some councils let people apply at the age of 18, while others let you apply even sooner at 16-year-olds.

EU workers and their families and refugees may also be eligible.

She says, “We can’t sit down and eat as a family, instead we’re scattered all over the place. In our old house we had one and it was nice to sit down together and compare notes on our days.

“Now it just feels so stressful. An inspector has come out and said he doesn’t know how we cope and that we need more space – at least five bedrooms. But if there are no houses spare then we have to stay where we are.

“The bathroom situation is a nightmare. We don’t even have a shower, so running the bath takes up a lot of the 10 minutes time that everyone has. Someone will be in the bath and someone else knocking on the door wanting to use the toilet.”

Marie acknowledges one solution would be for her eldest children to move out, but she says, ‘they’re not ready to yet’.

FINANCIAL STRUGGLE

While Marie doesn’t regret her decision to have so many children she has cautioned her own kids against having a big family.

She says, “It’s a constant struggle financially. I used to get £500 a week but my benefits have been cut due to four of my kids no longer qualifying for child benefit. So now I get £253 and it’s tough.

“I’ve had to visit food banks and even sold my horse last year because I couldn’t afford to keep him. And I’ve had to sell everything I can on eBay and Vinted.

“We have to make do with beans on toast a couple of nights a week. I look back at the time when I wasted money and regret it so much – I understand why people were so angry with me.