MOTHER-OF-THREE Alison McAuley can't believe the Government is giving with one hand and taking with the other.

A few years ago, when her marriage broke up and she looked as if she was going to lose her four-bedroomed home in Skelton, near Saltburn, her local housing association took advantage of a special Government-funded scheme to buy her home and rent it back to her.

"I was very grateful to them at the time, I lost about £50,000 of equity in the house but I saved my home," said Alison, 46.

Her two sporty, rugby-playing sons, Sean and David, both 15, are six-feet tall and both need their own bedrooms for all their kit. Her daughter, Taleesa, 24, has left home and is working and living in Middlesbrough.

Because of the new regulations - which rule that children under 16 of the same sex should share a bedroom - she has been told she has two spare bedrooms and will have her housing benefit cut accordingly.

Alison is now wondering how she can afford to the extra £150 a month she will lose.

"I started my own cleaning company, I cook and do catering but from day one I know that I will be in arrears. If I had the money to move out I would, but I haven't," she said.

"I am appalled, I don't have a degree and I don't know much about politics but this tax is absolutely wrong and it is not going to work," she said.