There are dark circles under her eyes, and she looks pale, as she calls the council’s housing department.
She tells them she doesn’t know where she’ll sleep tonight, along with her girls, aged 11 and seven.
Image: Nedret Batir was in tears as she spoke to Sky News
The man on the phone reassures her that they are looking for alternative accommodation and that she will have to wait.
But the panic is written all over her face. The clock is ticking.
“But I don’t have no place to leave my luggage,” she says, “because I have to go and pick up my children from school”.
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The caseworker simply replies: “Yeah, that’s not my concern.”
Image: Nedret Batir and her daughters with everything they own
‘Social cleansing’
Hers is a tale of desperation that has become normalised in England – but with a difference.
She has fallen victim to an out-of-area policy in place in this borough, and apparently across others in the capital, that moves families hours away from everything they know.
If two offers of accommodation are rejected, families are being told they are making themselves “intentionally homeless”.
And that is exactly what has happened to Nedret.
She has rejected a rental property in Hartlepool, five hours away from London. As a result, they have told her that they will be ending their duty to house her.
“I can’t take it anymore,” she tells me sobbing, “I don’t know what to do.”
She says she cannot tear her children away from where their father lives, where they go to school, and where she has support.
Image: Nedret Batir and her daughters, Eda and Ebru, on the bus
But the Enfield policy is written clearly, in an email, stating: “We will be finding homes for homeless families in parts of the country that are affordable to people on low incomes.
“The homes we offer will usually be a long way from Enfield, and outside southeast England.”
Housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa calls it “social cleansing”.
I show him the emails, the policy, the wording that is causing sleepless nights across the area, and probably the capital.
“It’s only affecting a certain group, those from low incomes,” he adds.
“Basically if you’re poor, get out. I’ve never seen it so, like in black and white. That is not what housing should be in the sixth richest economy in the world.”
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1:32
Why isn’t housing a bigger election issue?
Sky News has investigated and discovered that this is not just happening in London, it’s across the whole of England.
In every region, there has been a rise in the number of families with children being moved “out of area” into temporary accommodation.
Overall that figure has gone up in recent years by almost a quarter, according to our freedom of information requests.
‘I don’t have anybody here’
Abdullah Ahadi is already experiencing it first-hand, along with the isolation that being sent hours away can bring.
It’s 4.30am on a pitch-black March morning when we knock on his door in Corby, Northamptonshire.
He opens it, balancing on a walking stick, having been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.
It’s silent on the estate, a warren of brick homes, and his is the only one with a light on inside.
Image: Abdullah Ahadi, who has muscular dystrophy, walks his children to his car before the long drive to school
He is being temporarily housed here with his wife and four children – who were born in London and grew up in Harrow, in the northwest of the capital.
Abdullah said: “They told me if you don’t accept this house, we will take your name from the list which says you need a house [so] I have no choice.”
But it means he must get up before dawn, to drive his children to school in Harrow, for what often becomes an eight-hour round trip.
As everyone piles into his car, he describes the loneliness.
Image: Mr Ahadi spends up to eight hours a day on the school run
“I don’t have anybody here. I worry about my kids. At the weekend they just stay inside the home.
As his six-year-old triplets, two boys and one girl, fall asleep – Abdullah’s 10-year-old daughter, Laaibah, describes the exhaustion of waking up so early.
“You can tell from my voice,” she says.
Articulate and softly spoken, she says she misses her friends, but admits she hasn’t told them about her living situation.
“They just know that I live far away.”
She also describes how she feels “different from people” in Corby.
“There’s not much Muslims there so every time I walk past, most people stare at me because of my hijab.”
Image: Mr Ahadi’s daughter Laaibah
It also weighs heavy on Abdullah’s mind that his condition is deteriorating – his muscles are “wasting day by day”.
He says: “If something happens to me, who is coming here to take care of the children? We have a lot of support from family and friends in London.”
I ask why he doesn’t move his children to a new school in Corby.
He replies that he doesn’t know how long the family will be there, as it’s supposed to be temporary.
And that hits at the heart of this. School is the only constant in these families’ lives, and they cling to it.
‘I just want to give up’
Nedret and her daughters are the same.
They have now been moved to Ilford, another hotel room; still in London – but a two to three-hour bus journey to their school.
Ebru, 10, says she is struggling to do her homework in a cramped room, and getting up early to do the commute is taking it out of her.
I tell her that her mother has described her as “brave”, and ask her if she feels it.
She replies: “Yes and no. At one point I do, and at one point I don’t, I just want to give up.”
Her sister Eda is also extremely tired.
By the time we reach their school, because of terrible traffic, and missing another bus, it is nearing 11am, or, as Eda says, “nearly playtime”.
None of these families, on low incomes, can find affordable private rentals, even when they do – it’s hard to act fast enough to secure them, such is the market.
A leaflet from Enfield Council explains the “severe shortage of accommodation for private rent” in London and the region.
It describes how it “is especially hard to find affordable homes for people on benefits or a low income”.
Image: The Ahadi family travel long distances every day to get to school
Local Housing Allowance rates and rents elsewhere are apparently “more closely aligned and so are affordable for residents”.
Eventually, six months after they first moved to Corby, Abdullah’s family is brought back to London, to Hounslow in the west of the capital.
With his condition, driving more than an hour to school one way is still taking its toll, but life is much better being closer to support.
But it’s temporary. And that’s the thing. At any point, they could be moved on.
Laaibah looks less tired when I meet her at the new “emergency accommodation”, a light and airy house under Heathrow Airport‘s flight path.
She is worried about where they will be moved to next.
“If I make friends here it will be temporary and if I move you never know if people are going to be rude to me, and it is just going to feel bad if you are lonely. If I move school it is going to be really hard to make friends,” she says.
Image: Mr Ahadi says he is worried who will look after his children if something happens to him
Hunger and exhaustion
Seven months after Nedret was moved from Enfield to Ilford, we meet her in the same hotel room. Nothing, for her, has changed since the start of the year.
She says she has been spending money on taxis to school, and two buses back, and has run out.
“I can’t take my kids to school, I can’t buy them any food, my credit cards are full.”
Despite the school suggesting they move closer, Nedret says there are no spaces.
Image: Nedret Batir and her daughters Ebru (left) and Eda (middle)
At one point she suggests to me she even regrets not accepting the original Hartlepool offer.
Ebru, meanwhile, looks exhausted too – describing the family’s hunger.
“When I’m in bed sometimes me and [my sister] can’t sleep because we’re starving and my mum can’t do anything.”
Her school attendance has also dropped to 51%.
“I can’t do anything about it”, Ebru tells me, looking upset.
She now sees a therapist but says they “just give me kind words, she’s telling me: ‘You’ll get through this’. But I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all”.
Unfortunately, no matter where they are sent the rental market will continue to be volatile – and increasingly inaccessible to the poorest.
Temporary accommodation alone is not the answer to Britain’s housing crisis.
Harrow Council said: “While we can’t comment on individual cases, we understand the stress and uncertainty that comes with the threat of homelessness or the increasing number of families that have become homeless.
“That’s why we ensure the support is there including financial assistance to secure their own accommodation in the private rented sector. We are facing unprecedented demand and currently supporting over 4,000 families a year who are under the threat of becoming homeless, and over 1,200 households in temporary accommodation.
“Like many local authorities we have a high demand for social housing and a shortage of temporary accommodation. Harrow has one the lowest stocks of social housing in London.
“When we can we look to offer accommodation within, or as close as possible to Harrow. However average rents in Harrow have increased by over 10.5% in just the last 12 months so this has made it even harder for families and the council to find affordable accommodation which is suitable for households who approach seeking our help.
“It is also hard to find emergency accommodation in neighbouring boroughs for the same reasons.
“We do everything we can to find the most suitable homes for those in need of temporary accommodation, prioritising those with the most urgent need. Where we can’t offer something within the borough, we ensure that accommodation outside of the borough is suitable and meets their needs.”
An Enfield Council spokesperson said: “Despite extremely challenging financial conditions, we continue to do all we can to invest in Enfield to deliver positive outcomes for our residents. However, like many London boroughs, we are seeing a number of acute challenges including a shortage of social and affordable homes to rent.
“In line with other councils, we have moved to a national placement policy as a result of the extreme shortage of accommodation in London and the South East. Our priority is to find a suitable, permanent home for families as long-term hotel accommodation is neither appropriate, nor affordable.
“Hotel accommodation is incredibly costly and is damaging to the health and wellbeing of families which is why we must find alternative, suitable options. Given the dwindling supply of housing which is not set to improve in the near future, residents have been advised to be ready at short notice when a placement becomes available.
“Increasing numbers of families are turning to councils for temporary accommodation and financial support as homelessness reaches record highs. The scale of homelessness and impact on councils’ budgets mean we must manage these pressures whilst ensuring that homeless families are provided with appropriate housing, rather than unsuitable hotel accommodation.”
This is a special report in Faultlines, a Sky News series that aims to explore some of the biggest issues facing Britain ahead of the general election.
You can watch Adele Robinson’s full report today at 10.30am, 12.30pm, 2.30pm, 4.30pm, 6.30pm and 8.30pm on Sky News or on YouTube.
The search for Jay Slater in an area of Tenerife has been called off, police have said, nearly two weeks after his disappearance.
The British teenager, from Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn in Lancashire, has been missing in Tenerife since 17 June, when he vanished the morning after a rave.
The Civil Guard called for volunteers to join a new search in the Masca area – near his last-known location – on Saturday.
It has now confirmed to Sky News that the search has ended. Police are keeping the investigation open and could yet open up searches in the south of the island, but have not provided an update.
A handful of volunteers turned up to help rescue teams on Saturday, forming a total group of 30 to 40 people scouring a huge area of rugged and hilly terrain.
Image: The Los Carrizales ravine where Jay Slater was being searched for. Pic: Reuters
Mr Slater, 19, had been on holiday with friends on the Spanish island and was last pictured at Papayago, a nightclub hosting the end of the NRG festival, late on 16 June.
After the event ended, he got in a car travelling to a small Airbnb in Masca with two men, who police said on Saturday are “not relevant” to the case.
His last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island – which is about an 11-hour walk from his accommodation.
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0:49
‘I just want him back’
A local cafe owner told Sky News he tried to catch a bus back to Los Cristianos, where he was staying.
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Ofelia Medina Hernandez said she spoke to the teenager at 8am on 17 June, telling him a bus was due at 10am – but he set off walking and she said she later drove past him “walking fast”.
Image: A missing persons poster for Jay Slater in Tenerife
The apprentice bricklayer called a friend holidaying with him at around 8.30am on 17 June and said he was going to walk back after missing the bus.
He also told his friend he was lost and in need of water, with only 1% charge on his phone.
On Friday, Mr Slater’s friend Brad Hargreaves told ITV’s This Morning he had been on a video call with him before his disappearance when he heard him go off the road.
He said he could see his friend’s feet “sliding” down the hill and hear he was walking on gravel.
Meanwhile, Mr Slater’s family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager captured on CCTV in a nearby town 10 hours after he was first reported missing.
Image: Mr Slater’s family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager
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Police have begun visiting more than 160 families in Hull to repatriate ashes recovered from a funeral parlour in the city.
Investigators have been able to identify them through documentation and extensive enquiries.
However, some of the ashes will never be formally identified because cremation makes it impossible to extract DNA.
It emerged earlier in the year that officers had removed a number of bodies from three branches of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors – two in Hull and one in Beverley.
Humberside Police said it had received a “number of calls from concerned members of the public”.
Now, the force says it has “begun the process of visiting 163 families across the city in regards to the repatriation of ashes” recovered from the branch of the company located in Hessle Road in Hull.
It added: “Officers from the force along with support staff from Hull City Council and East Riding Council will provide those affected with a detailed update on what they’ve recovered and discuss the options available to them.”
Image: Richard Shaw had unidentified ashes in an urn at his home. Pic: Richard Shaw
Richard Shaw, whose wife Rita died after a short illness last October, had unidentified ashes in an urn at his home for many months.
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Mr Shaw, 70, used Legacy Independent Funeral Directors. After the firm was raided by police in March, he became concerned he might have been given the wrong ashes.
His worst fears were realised when police recently contacted him to say they had recovered what they believed to be his wife’s ashes during their inquiries.
They have just been returned to him, eight months after her death.
He was given ashes in December while his wife was cremated in January, according to a letter found by police.
The unidentified ashes have been scattered around a rose tree he planted for Rita.
Image: Mr Shaw says grief comes ‘in waves’. Pic: Richard Shaw
It still feels “raw”, he told Sky News.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “It comes over you in waves.”
Mr Shaw, who volunteers at the hospice where his wife died, added: “I’m taking [it] that they’re Rita’s ashes, but it’s just a case of if I didn’t accept that I don’t know how I’d cope with it all.
“I think I’m more positive that they’re Rita’s ashes but they’ve been cremated so they can’t check on the DNA side of it.”
The families are calling for a permanent memorial for their loved ones.
Monthly candlelit vigils have been taking place at the city’s Pickering Park, providing those affected with support in uncertain times.
Some families say it would be the perfect location for a memorial garden.
Image: The Hessle Road branch of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull
Karen Dry, who used Legacy Independent Funeral Directors when her parents died, has organised the gatherings.
She told Sky News: “We need a permanent memorial – we need somewhere people can come and sit and reflect on their loved ones and families, somewhere that’s peaceful so that we know that they’re always resting.”
She added: “We were all perfect strangers at the beginning and now we’re very good friends. We’ve created our own community.”
A man, 46, and a woman, 23, were arrested on suspicion of prevention of a lawful and decent burial, fraud by false representation, and fraud by abuse of position.
They have been released on bail while inquiries continue.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says there’s a conspiracy of silence this election – that all of the major political parties aren’t being honest enough about their fiscal plans this election.
And they have a point. Most obviously (and this is the main thing the IFS is complaining about) none of the major manifestos – from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative parties – have been clear about how they will fill an impending black hole in the government’s spending plans.
No need to go into all the gritty details, but the overarching point is that all government spending plans include some broad assumptions about how much spending (and for that matter, taxes and economic growth) will grow in the coming years. Economists call this the “baseline”.
But there’s a problem with this baseline: it assumes quite a slow increase in overall government spending in the next four years, an average of about 1 per cent a year after accounting for inflation. Which doesn’t sound too bad except that we all know from experience that NHS spending always grows more quickly than that, and that 1 per cent needs to accommodate all sorts of other promises, like increasing schools and defence spending and so on.
Image: NHS spending grows more quickly than the ‘baseline’
If all those bits of government are going to consume quite a lot of that extra money (far more than a 1 per cent increase, certainly) then other bits of government won’t get as much. In fact, the IFS reckons those other bits of government – from the Home Office to the legal system – will face annual cuts of 3.5 per cent. In other words, it’s austerity all over again.
But here’s the genius thing (for the politicians, at least). While they have to set a baseline, to make all their other sums add up, the dysfunctional nature of the way government sets its spending budgets means it only has to fill in the small print about which department gets what when it does a spending review. And that spending review isn’t due until after the election.
The upshot is all the parties can pretend they’ve signed up to the baseline even when it’s patently obvious that more money will be needed for those unprotected departments (or else it’s a return to austerity).
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So yes, the IFS is right: the numbers in each manifesto, including Labour’s, are massively overshadowed by this other bigger conspiracy of silence.
But I would argue that actually the conspiracy of silence goes even deeper. Because it’s not just fiscal baselines we’re not talking about enough. Consider five other issues none of the major parties is confronting (when I say major parties, in this case I’m talking about the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem manifestos – to some extent the Green and Reform manifestos are somewhat less guilty of these particular sins, even if they commit others).
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First, for all their promises not to raise any of the major tax rates (something Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems have all committed to) the reality is taxes are going up. We will all be paying more in taxes by the end of the parliament compared with today.
Indeed, we’ll all be paying more income tax. Except that we’ll be paying more of it because we’ll be paying tax on more of our income – that’s the inexorable logic of freezing the thresholds at which you start paying certain rates of tax (which is what this government has done – and none of the other parties say they’ll reverse).
Second, the main parties might say they believe in different things, but they all seem to believe in one particular offbeat religion: the magic tax avoidance money tree. All three of these manifestos assume they will make enormous sums – more, actually, than from any single other money-raising measure – from tightening up tax avoidance rules.
While it’s perfectly plausible that you could raise at least some money from clamping down on tax avoidance, it’s hardly a slam-dunk. That this is the centrepiece of each party’s money-raising efforts says a lot. And, another thing that’s often glossed over: raising more money this way will also raise the tax burden.
Image: Should the Bank of England be paying large sums in interest to banks? File pic: AP
Third is another thing all the parties agree on and are desperate not to question: the fiscal rules. The government has a set of rules requiring it to keep borrowing and (more importantly given where the numbers are right now) total debt down to a certain level.
But here’s the thing. These rules are not god-given. They are not necessarily even all that good. The debt rule is utterly gameable. It hasn’t stopped the Conservatives raising the national debt to the highest level in decades. And it’s not altogether clear the particular measure of debt being used (net debt excluding Bank of England interventions) is even the right one.
Which raises another micro-conspiracy. Of all the parties at this election, the only one talking about whether the Bank of England should really be paying large sums in interest to banks as it winds up its quantitative easing programme is the Reform Party. This policy, first posited by a left-wing thinktank (the New Economics Foundation) is something many economists are discussing. It’s something the Labour Party will quite plausibly carry out to raise some extra money if it gets elected. But no one wants to discuss it. Odd.
Brexit impact
Anyway, the fourth issue everyone seems to have agreed not to discuss is, you’ve guessed it, Brexit. While the 2019 election was all about Brexit, this one, by contrast, has barely featured the B word. Perhaps you’re relieved. For a lot of people we’ve talked so much about Brexit over the past decade or so that, frankly, we need a bit of a break. That’s certainly what the main parties seem to have concluded.
But while the impact of leaving the European Union is often overstated (no, it’s not responsible for every one of our economic problems) it’s far from irrelevant to our economic plight. And where we go with our economic neighbours is a non-trivial issue in the future.
Anyway, this brings us to the fifth and final thing no one is talking about. The fact that pretty much all the guff spouted on the campaign trail is completely dwarfed by bigger international issues they seem reluctant or ill-equipped to discuss. Take the example of China and electric cars.
Image: Brexit has barely featured in the election. File pic: Victoria Jones/PA
Just recently, both the US and European Union have announced large tariffs on the import of Chinese EVs. Now, in America’s case those tariffs are primarily performative (the country imports only a tiny quantity of Chinese EVs). But in Europe‘s case Chinese EVs are a very substantial part of the market – same for the UK.
Raising the question: what is the UK going to do? You could make a strong case for saying Britain should be emulating the EU and US, in an effort to protect the domestic car market. After all, failing to impose tariffs will mean this country will have a tidal wave of cars coming from China (especially since they can no longer go to the rest of the continent without facing tariffs) which will make it even harder for domestic carmakers to compete. And they’re already struggling to compete.
By the same token, imposing tariffs will mean the cost of those cheap Chinese-made cars (think: MGs, most Teslas and all those newfangled BYDs and so on) will go up. A lot. Is this really the right moment to impose those extra costs on consumers.
In short, this is quite a big issue. Yet it hasn’t come up as a big issue in this campaign. Which is madness. But then you could say the same thing about, say, the broader race for minerals, about net zero policy more widely and about how we’re going to go about tightening up sanctions on Russia to make them more effective.
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Think back to the last time a political party actually confronted some long-standing issues no one wanted to talk about in their manifesto. I’m talking about the 2017 Conservative manifesto, which pledged to resolve the mess of social care in this country, once and for all.
It sought to confront a big social issue, intergenerational inequality, in so doing ensuring younger people wouldn’t have to subsidise the elderly.
The manifesto was an absolute, abject, electoral disaster. It was largely responsible for Theresa May‘s slide in the polls from a 20 point lead to a hung parliament.
And while most people don’t talk about that manifesto anymore, make no mistake: today’s political strategists won’t forget it in a hurry. Hence why this year’s campaign and this year’s major manifestos are so thin.
Elections are rarely won on policy proposals. But they are sometimes lost on them.