An RAF serviceman feared his family's home could have exploded after waiting six months for a gas leak to be fixed.

Sgt Tim Greenhalgh, 39, lives at Ministry of Defence accommodation, in Cranwell Avenue, Carterton, with his wife and three children, and is based at RAF Brize Norton.

He claimed it took the MoD six months to fix a gas leak in the kitchen after it was first alerted to the problem when the smell of gas was noticed by a Transco engineer last December.

MODern Housing Solutions is contracted to deal with accommodation problems at homes provided for members of the armed forces.

Their engineers mended the leak in a pipe to the cooker last week, during an annual inspection.

Sgt Greenhalgh said: "I'm very relieved, but angry that it took this long. Anything could have happened in that time - the kitchen could have blown up."

A spokesman for the MoD said engineers had repaired two separate gas leaks at the house - one last December and another this month and disputed that there had been a leak for six months.

The spokesman added: "The health and safety of the occupants of our service family houses is of primary concern to us."

The MoD launched an investigation in April after photographs of dilapidated accommodation at RAF Brize Norton were passed on to newspapers.

The pictures showed shabby homes with damp walls, windows covered with plastic sheets, peeling paint and leaking sewer pipes.

The state of the accommodation was condemned by Witney MP David Cameron.