When a floorboard came loose in a Friern Barnet Council flat, the tenant was amazed to discover a two-inch-deep pool underneath her entire flat.

Lisa Barnes, a single mother with two young sons, had wondered about the faint smell of damp in her Link Road flat, so when council contractors found and repaired the leak after a week's work, she thought the problems were over. Yet two weeks later, on August 7, a second leak, further along the pipe, appeared.

A three-inch-wide hole formed in the earth next to an external wall, from which water steadily flowed out, waterlogging the grass outside her flat and letf a seven-foot-wide pool of water.

"Children have been making boats and playing in the water," she said. "They've all been having diarrhoea and been bitten by mosquitos. It's absolutely disgusting."

Contractors were due to begin repairing the second leak onn August 15.