A bedbound pensioner had her toe chewed off by a rat while she waited for the council to send a pest exterminator to her home.
The 88-year-old's daughter, Andrea Scott, first raised the infestation with the Labour-run local authority after seeing one of the rodents run from an armchair into the kitchen of her mother's home.
Ms Scott was shocked when they told her that her elderly mother would have to pay £297 for the council to send round a pest exterminator - a cost out of reach for the diabetic pensioner, who has not been named.
Even once she had paid for the treatment herself Ms Scott, who lives in a council-supplied house in Southampton, Hampshire, was given a date weeks away for the exterminator's visit.
In the meantime she laid her own rat traps and poison in her mother's home to try and catch the rodents but none were caught.
