A family was left waiting on the streets for seven hours for the council to come and fix a leak in their house, which had already been partially destroyed by fire before Christmas.

The flood followed a blaze which ripped through the family of five's home on Whinfield Avenue in Braithwaite while they slept.

Angela Wright awoke at about 3am to find the bedroom filled with smoke and raised the alarm.

It is thought that the fire was caused by an electrical fault and Mrs Wright, her husband and their three young children were lucky to escape uninjured.

"The fire was bad enough, lots of our things were ruined, but what followed was even worse," says Mrs Wright.

"After the fire, the house was in such a state that we had to move out into temporary accommodation, so the house was empty.

"But my next door neighbour called on January 5 and said that I'd better go back home because it was flooding.

"Two water pipes had burst. All the stuff that we'd saved from the fire in the kitchen is ruined - and the water has damaged all our kitchen tiles.

"I rang Bradford Council's emergency number because I needed someone to let me into the house and to turn off the water.

"It was awful knowing that it was getting worse and there was nothing I could do, but they said they'd be there quickly and kept saying they'd arrive in ten or 15 minutes."

Mrs Wright says she called at 2pm and was hanging around with her children for about seven hours, waiting for help to arrive.

In the end she saw a council contractor's van driving past and followed it in her own car.

She says: "I flashed him down and he said he wasn't even on his way to see me - it was a fluke that I'd seen him."

The contractor assisted Mrs Wright, but it was not until the following day that someone from the company came in response to her original call.

A council spokesman said: "We greatly regret the distress this incident has caused to Mrs Wright.

"Our housing manager has apologised personally and we would like to reiterate this.

"Our contractors were unable to respond to this problem as soon as we would have wished.

"The matter has now been taken up with them to ensure they will be available for emergency call outs in the future."

The Wright family will stay in temporary accommodation until the end of February, when work on their home is scheduled to be fully completed.