A mother has been convicted of child neglect after police found her flat in a chaotic state and she appeared drunk.

Officers used body worn video cameras to film parts of her behaviour and the inside of the Hove flat showing a cluttered living room, dirty kitchen, few working lights and bare cupboards.

Her seven-year-old son told an officer when they visited after 9pm last December he had not had any dinner and he was not wearing any shoes, the court heard.

PC Stuart Brown said there was a smell of “mouldy washing-up water” in the kitchen, unidentified medication within the child's reach, broken computer equipment on the floor and the mother smelled of alcohol.

The mother, who cannot be named as her children's identity is protected, took two hours to let the officers in after they were called to a disturbance.

The officers trying to get in threatened to break the door down and she threatened to stab them.

Roger Booth, prosecuting, said: “The obvious inference was that it had not got into that state in the two hours in which police were trying to get in.”

Ray Pape, defending, said the council flat was being renovated due to a major water leak from upstairs, after a lengthy battle with the council, and a fuse had blown that day, killing the lights.

He added: “I am going to suggest that this is one of those cases that is better dealt with by social services intervention and not really by the criminal court.

“The children are now living with their grandmother and social services are involved.”

Giving evidence at her trial on Friday, the mother-of-two produced a supermarket receipt to show she had been food shopping for her children and said she was struggling financially and her benefits had been docked. She said she had drunk two glasses of cava but was not drunk.

Convicting at Brighton Magistrates Court, District Judge Teresa Szagun said she accepted the mother was drunk and her drinking showed she had not prioritised sorting out the blown lights and other problems.

She accepted the mother was under a “great deal of pressure” and loved her children, but ruled she had neglected her son despite understandxing his needs.

The mother was not accused of neglecting her second child, who was asleep in the flat at the time.

She has been released on bail to be sentenced in January.