You'll have had your T then . .

IT seemed like a routine job for the council's housing team.

A young man had returned the keys to his flat after two years of trouble-free living and they were dispatched to give it a quick once over.

But any thoughts of moving a new tenant into the Niddrie property quickly disappeared as soon as they opened the door.

An overpowering stench wafting from the bathroom was the first sign that all was not well.

A quick investigation revealed a choked toilet and a bath full of unopened mail was partly to blame. But that was nothingcompared to what lay in wait in the living room.

Hundreds of empty cans of Tennent's Lager cans littered every corner of the room while a three-foot-high pile of rubbish, including an assortment of old takeaway wrappers and tin foil cartons, had attracted an infestation of mice.

In the kitchen, the bottom of the sink was black with tobacco and covered by a shallow pool of stale lager unable to escape through the blocked plughole. Opened cans of dog food revealed that, although he never told the city council, the man shared his hovel with a pet.

Amazingly, in the chaos of the one-bedroom flat, there was one sign of order. While cans of Tennent's were the only sign of drinking in the living room, the bedroom was almost as full with empty bottles of cider.

The mattress on a solitary bed was covered with cigarette butts which the tenant appears to have stubbed out as he lay there.

The state of the Greendykes Gardens flat only came to light after the 33-year-old single man moved out. Rather than abandon it, he left a forwarding address with city council officers and now faces being hit with a hefty repair bill, starting with the 400 it cost to fumigate the property yesterday.

The floorboards are stained and a number of the walls have been left half-painted, but the local authority, which has a lengthy council house waiting list, will aim to have it habitable within its usual target of 40 days.

Even in Niddrie, one of the most deprived parts of Scotland, when a council flat becomes available it attracts around 30 applicants.

Peter Strong, the city council's neighbourhood manager for east Edinburgh, said: "We have a forwarding address and we will bill him for everything it costs to put right. We had no idea about the state of the flat. We'd had no complaints from neighbours whatsoever. We went round expecting a routine inspection - we had even advertised it for people to move in right away

"Normally, we get houses back in all sorts of conditions and some are even worse than this. But this was very striking. The living room looked like a Tennent's brewery after the staff party."

Although there were no signs of drug use, the council had to carry out a needle search to make sure no syringes were hidden beneath the empty cans.

Cleaners wearing boots with extra thick soles and gloves covered with Kevlar, the material used in bullet proof vests, waded through the rubbish searching for needles before the clean-up began. No needles were found

Councillor Sheila Gilmore, the city's housing leader, said although the conditions the man was living in were "concerning" there was little the city council could do to prevent similar cases emerging.

"This type of case is difficult to stop happening," she added.

"It was unusual that we had no complaints and this man was clearly not causing a nuisance.

"He did not show any external signs that he was not coping. We try to give support to people who are suffering in any way but there has to be a willingness to co-operate. [Inspections of council properties] is something we tend not to do on a regular basis, it's not necessary for most people.

"It's always a concern that some people are unable to cope, but we can't help if they chose to live in a reclusive way."