Father with 18 children and 10 women wants to have six-bedroom house

Peter Rolfe, 64, says the town hall has a ‘duty of care’ to upgrade him and his large brood to a six-bedroom home on the Isle of Wight.A larger property would be worth at least £300,000 but Mr Rolfe, who has not worked for more than 20 years, lives off benefits and claims he had to give up work to care for his offspring.The single father says his current home is too cramped for himself and the five children and two grandchildren who live there – son Peter, 19, daughters Rose Anne, 18, Marie Anne, 15, Carrie Anne, 14, Leeanne, 17, and her one-year-old twins Lexi and Courtney. Mr Rolfe said: ‘They are making out I’m a bum. Why does it matter that I’m on benefits?‘They are discriminating against me and the kids. The council has a duty of care, to make sure we have a decent place to live.‘They have abused my human rights. They are treating me and my children like second class citizens.’Mr Rolfe said the family like their home in Newport, but claims one room is covered in mould and the fourth bedroom is so small it ‘may as well be a cabinet’. Their living conditions become desperate when four of his other children come to visit at weekends and have to sleep in the living room, he said.The father of Leeanne’s twins Daniel Beck, 24, also stays four nights a week to help take care of his children.None of the children who are of working age have jobs and Mr Rolfe says he relies instead on state handouts like housing benefit and child tax credit to get by. He said: ‘They are all in further education so they can get some qualifications and get good jobs.’Mr Rolfe, who claims to have nine further children – with whom he no longer has contact – added: ‘I have 18 children with about ten women. I made some mistakes when I was younger but now I’ll do anything to make my kids happy.‘Getting a larger house would mean the world to us. It would mean we could get some peace  and space.’He said: ‘I hate to see the children have no space, no privacy. They have nowhere to do their homework so they are doing badly at school.’ Incredibly, Mr Rolfe successfully complained to the Local Government Ombudsman that the property, which he moved into in September 2011, was too small. The watchdog agreed that one of the rooms was too tiny to be legally classed as a bedroom and ruled that Mr Rolfe and his family had suffered a serious injustice as a result of failings by the Isle of Wight Council. However the authority this week rejected the ombudsman’s recommendation to pay the family £1,000 in compensation and bump them to the top of the housing register because it was against policy. Members agreed a lesser amount of £250 was sufficient.Cllr Gordon Kendall, the authority’s cabinet member for housing, said Mr Rolfe was ‘operating the system to his own advantage’.Mr Rolfe said: ‘I spent two years pursuing the case with the ombudsman and the council have ignored his report.‘What is the point of an ombudsman if all the council do is ignore the findings? They’re basically sticking two fingers up at the whole process.’ However, Mr Rolfe may yet get his dream home.The council says it does not have any six-bed homes available but is now considering buying a property big enough for them – or  knocking two together to create one large house.He said: ‘I don’t care about the money, it is about the children and their human right to live.‘It’s an ongoing injustice but I will never give up on my children.’(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az