A mother has spoken of her family's misery over four years of sewage problems in their home.

Maggie Sullivan, 40, says she, her husband Trevor, 41, and their four young children have been made sick by sewage bursting out of drains on their property.

The Argus reported in 2004 how the family's GP blamed the sewage for a string of minor illnesses suffered by their children.

Problems began in 2002 when the family, of Pett Level Road, Fairlight, near Hastings, allowed engineers from Southern Water to lay a pipe on their land to transport raw waste to a nearby treatment works.

The pipe was part of a £700,000 improvement scheme.

But Mrs Sullivan said the raw sewage, which comes from all the other houses in Fairlight, frequently gets blocked under their home.

It means lorries have to flush away the waste with gallons of water.

Mrs Sullivan says the engineering blunder not only cut them off from the main sewer but left the sewage of the whole of Fairlight village spilling out of open drains on their property.

Mrs Sullivan has complained that manhole covers near the kitchen and her sons' bedrooms are not sealed and emit a noxious smell.

Alex, 12, Aaron, nine, Antony, eight, and Adam, five, were ill so often their parents employed a private tutor to teach them at home.

In September 2004 Southern Water dug up and relaid the entire system, reconnecting the Sullivans back to the main sewer.

But now some of the land, which was used by Southern Water as a bridge crossing to continue the scheme, is subsiding into a nearby stream.

The family say Southern Water tried and failed to repair the damage three times and have threatened to take the utility company to court to demand the work is completed.

Mrs Sullivan said: "We have exchanged the sewage contamination of our home and land for the loss of some of it into the stream.

"You have no idea how much we have suffered, with the illness of the children, the continual disturbance of JCBs, the noise, the stench and all the damage.

"We had hoped it would all be over by now but instead the delays are causing us more distress and we cannot get on with our lives or our business.

"Southern Water has known about the failure of their reinstatement since the beginning of November 2005 but nothing has been done.

"Now it is so bad that it threatens to block the water course altogether and with the rains set to continue, it could cause still more flooding. Our land is disappearing every day.

"It is soul-destroying."

Southern Water has promised to reassess the situation. A spokeswoman said: "No one at Southern Water wanted this initial solution to fail, we did hope it would be a permanent solution and we are determined to put in place the right solution."