York MP Hugh Bayley is stepping into the row over a council flat drug den after it emerged the same property was turned down by not one, but two potential tenants.

Mr Bayley is calling on City of York Council and police to set living conditions to rights at the flat in the Chapelfields area of York.

The mother of an 18-year-old woman with a young baby contacted the Evening Press after we told how Greg Crampton and Kim Oldfield moved into the flat in Bramham Road to find used syringes on the floor.

She said her daughter had been offered the same flat as temporary accommodation, but had turned it down after seeing its poor state and being approached by two men looking for the former tenant.

She said: "They gave the flat to my daughter just before Christmas when she was weeks away from having her baby.

"But you wouldn't even put a pig in there: it was disgusting.

"While we were looking round two young lads pulled up in a car outside and asked for the person who had lived there before."

She claims that when her daughter told them the previous tenant had left they said: "Well you'd better find out where they have gone because we are coming back."

Her daughter's comments on the flat's state and her fears concerning the associates of the former tenant were put to York MP Hugh Bayley, who wrote to the council on the young woman's behalf.

She has since been allocated a property elsewhere in the city.

Mr Bayley said: "The council has to realise how terrifying it is for a drug dealer to come round and threaten tenants. That's why the council has got to work with the police to scare the drug dealers off."

Lesley Healey, head of advice and housing assessment for City of York Council, said houses were often offered to tenants before repair work had been done by entering into an agreement with the tenant that repairs would be carried out when they had moved in. This is what happened in the young woman's case.

She said the flat had been cleaned by contractors at the end of the previous tenancy, and twice after the woman's comments.

With regard to the needles found by Greg Crampton and Kim Oldfield, she said she would be going back to the contracting company to find out why the needle search had not picked them up.

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