Family in frantic search for home (From Penarth Times)

Family in frantic search for home

IN A MATTER of weeks a young couple and their five children will be without a permanent residency in Penarth.

Richard and Katrina Lapton have until Saturday June 28 to find an alternative home. The family have been renting their present address in King Street for five years and were very happy until Christmas last year.

Richard, 30, said: "Our landlady wants to retire and sell the house so we have to move out. It would be impossible for us to afford a new house.

"We have been renting for a long time but we have nothing to show for our payments, unlike a mortgage."

He added: "We have been on the general waiting list for a Vale of Glamorgan Council house in Penarth but we have been unsuccessful so far. I have heard some bad stories about hostels and I don't want my children to be in one."

A spokesman for the Vale of Glamorgan Council said that the couple can apply for a new Gold Card scheme which will advertise houses to apply for in the local Press.

He added that the family were a priority case and said: "If the family become roofless before they are successful in their search for a property, then the authority has made arrangements for the provision of temporary accommodation."

The council also pointed out that the family are aware of the Billybanks' residents having priority for houses at the moment.

But mother-of-five Katrina, who has clinical depression and is unable to work, is loathe to move away from the area.

She says she is desperate for her family to stay in the town they were raised. She said: "I don't want to uproot my children from Penarth. I have lived here all my 27 years and my family are settled.

"I am extremely worried about the affect it will have on the family if we are split up and placed in separate hostels."