DESPERATE Birmingham families face a 99 YEAR wait for the largest council houses, the Birmingham Mail can reveal.

The ‘lifetime’ warning has been issued for those seeking properties of four bedrooms or more.

The average waiting time for all housing types – including flats, maisonettes and two and three-bedroom houses – is an estimated six years.

Birmingham City Council is the largest social landlord in the UK, with 65,000 dwellings, around 17 per cent of the city’s total housing.

Yet there is a chronic shortage of four and five-bedroom council homes, which are awarded on a points system.

The council also admits that the new government benefit cap on private rentals will push most of the city’s bigger properties out of the reach of large families.

Around 30,000 people are currently on the council’s housing list and a further 28,000 are receiving some form of housing benefit to rent privately.

The crisis is fuelled by the fact that 70 per cent of city residents can not afford to buy the average-sized home on their income.

Councillor Ken Wood (Cons, Longbridge) who is vice-chairman of the city’s Housing Scrutiny Committee said: “We simply do not have the stock of four of five bedroom council homes that we need.

“The committee has received reports that say you will have to wait 99 years for a council house of that size. We are building more council homes now than at any stage in the last 30 years, but we do need to get away from the idea that social housing is the last resort.

“We have some wonderful tenants and I personally think that we have to move away from the growing stigma attached to social housing.”

Mum-of-three Gabriella Sinclair says she has tried and failed in the city’s new bidding process for three- bedroom council houses, which are being chased by more than 1,000 desperate families.