MUM-OF-THREE Laura More has been left furious after her Hotpoint tumble dryer caught fire after waiting weeks for an engineer to come and fix her faulty model.

Laura, 35, was at her home in Huntick Estate, Lytchett Matravers, on Friday night when the drier she has owned for more than three years caught fire.

"Luckily I was in the kitchen at the time where the tumble dryer is kept so I noticed the smoke quite quickly," said Laura, who works for an energy sustainability company.

"I opened the door and could see the flames at the back of the machine. It was like looking into a fire.

"Quickly I pulled the clothes out of the dryer as I thought they would just add fuel and then shut the dryer door before calling the fire brigade.

"I grabbed the kids who were all in their pyjamas and waited outside of the house for them to arrive.

"Thankfully they were there within ten minutes went into the house and picked up the tumble dryer and moved it into the garden."

The family-of-five has been left with an empty hole in their kitchen and a pile of scorched clothes but fortunately no one was hurt in the fire.

Laura had been warned in December that there was a fault with her dryer model after Whirlpool, the umbrella company which owns Hotpoint, issued a safety warning that her model along with more than 100 others posed a fire risk.

"I received a letter from Hotpoint in December which said my machine may have a fault which could cause it to catch fire," added Laura.

"I phone them immediately and they said an engineer would call to come and modify it to make sure it was safe but was told that would take a few weeks as there was a back log due to Christmas.

"At the time we were told to only use the dryer while we were in the house."

Almost five weeks later the dryer went up in flames with still no visit from a Hotpoint engineer.

Research from consumer watchdog Which? revealed that 113 models of Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda tumble dryer models manufactured between April 2004 and October 2015 could pose a fire risk.

It also found that nearly 12,000 fires were caused by faulty home products between 2011 and March 2014, and that it's possible that "some brands are more prone to catching fire than others".

For Laura her main priority is making sure other people are warned.

"There are probably hundreds of families out there who have bought a dryer that could cause a house fire and they need to be warned," she added.

A spokesman from Hotpoint said: “We investigate all reported incidents thoroughly.

In the particular case our engineer will visit the property and we will subsequently examine it in detail.

"However, until we have completed these investigations we are unable to comment further.”