A mum has been too terrified to let her daughter play out at their Incommunities home, where only rusty metal railings separate the garden from a sheer drop into a quarry.

When Shelley Banks moved into the house at Farleton Drive, Fagley, with her three-year-old daughter in September she was so glad to have a roof over her head after being homeless that she never gave the overgrown garden a second thought.

But when winter passed and finer weather arrived, she was shocked to see it was just a row of old railings between the end of her back garden and a working quarry about 100ft deep.

Her mum, Michelle Banks, said: “The garden was in a shocking state. It was a tip when she moved in, but when we realised how dangerous it was we got in touch with Incommunities and an officer came out to inspect it, telling us he’d get his men round to put up a fence. But time passed and we didn’t hear anything.

“Then we got told their legal team had been looking into whose responsibility it was to get the work done and they thought it was down to the quarry, so there was another delay.

“Eventually a woman from Incommunities came round to have another look and said if my daughter got all the overgrown stuff cut down she would come back and have another look and maybe get a hedge planted. So that’s what Shelley did, but since then she’s just been passed from pillar to post with no one doing anything to help us.

“All this time and it’s meant it hasn’t been safe for the little one to play out. We’ve even heard now that this house was on the void list and should not have been let.”

After the Telegraph & Argus contacted Incommunities, a spokesman for the social housing provider said it had visited the house.

He added: “As a caring and responsible landlord we have agreed with the customer to fit stock fencing to raise the height of the existing fencing at the rear of the garden. We are also planting a line of hedging to provide a further natural barrier. This work is being carried out within the next fortnight.”