AN IRANIAN family battling deportation to their homeland have been handed a £650 rental bill after the Home Office cut off their funding.

Blind husband and wife Khalil, 62, and Lisa Khameneh, 49, and their 18-year-old daughter Ariana, from Southampton, are applying for special permission to remain in the country.

They fear they will be tortured and killed if they go back to Iran because of their Christian beliefs.

However, their landlord, who is no longer being paid by the Home Office has now sent them a bill for unpaid rent.

The government has cut the family's weekly £94 allowance because Ariana, a student at Taunton's College in Southampton, has turned 18.

A letter sent to the family earlier this month from the Home Office told them that they would have to vacate their home in Briarswood, Shirley.

Rev Ian Johnson, team rector of Southampton City Centre Parish, said he had persuaded the landlord not to hand them an eviction notice by pledging to raise the rent money.

Lisa, a former English teacher who suffers from chronic lung problems, came with her husband and daughter to England in September 2003 on six-month visas.

The family have filled in documents under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 designed for failed asylum seekers who are too sick to travel home.