‘Where am I going to go with the kids?’ Mum-of-three left homeless after reporting threats to police
As mother-of-three Danielle pushes two prams down the street in south London, her only thought is where will they all sleep tonight?
The 21-year-old, whose children are all under the age of five, had a council house in Southwark but had to move out because she faced threats of violence.
“I didn’t know that going to the police would end up with me being homeless,” she says.
Heartbroken and panicking, with nowhere else to go, Danielle is in a park with her three children – two daughters, aged one and four, and her two-year-old son.
“I’m so sorry, I wish this could all be better,” she tells them. Her eldest clutches a plastic toy and asks when they are going home.
“We don’t have a home anymore,” Danielle replies. She can’t hide the truth from her any longer.
Danielle, who has long dark hair and is wearing a puffer jacket, is pacing, her mobile phone pressed to her ear, making a series of desperate phone calls, pleading for help.
“Where am I going to go with the kids,” she asks a housing officer. “I have nowhere to go.”
At this point it’s around 3pm and council offices will soon be closing. As her phone dies, Danielle, now sitting on a bench, her eldest daughter comforting her siblings in their buggies, breaks down in tears.
Her story exemplifies a national housing crisis where currently more than 150,000 children in England are living in temporary accommodation.
It is hard to imagine someone more vulnerable; a 21-year-old, at risk of violence, a care leaver herself, mother-of-three. If she’s fallen through the net, then who is it catching?
Initially, Southwark council paid for her to have temporary accommodation elsewhere.
But things changed when police informed them it was too dangerous for her to come back to the borough.
“To sit there and tell a four-year-old little girl we can’t go home because we don’t have a home, that’s very upsetting as a mum because I brought her into this world to love her, protect her, to give her a home, and me being a mum telling her I can’t do that right now, it breaks my heart, but I know it’s not my fault,” she tells Sky News.
“Last Tuesday, I got a call to say they could no longer fund my accommodation because the police said it’s no longer safe to return back to Southwark, so they don’t owe me a duty of care.”
The council emailed her a letter which implied she was being made homeless for her own protection. The letter instructed her to present herself to another “local authority homeless person unit to seek rehousing outside of Southwark,” it said. “This is on the grounds of personal protection for you and your children.”
The letter, dated 30 September, explained her current accommodation would terminate on 9 October.
But, when Danielle approached another council, they wanted more details from Southwark. In the meantime, her landlord said Southwark had stopped paying, so he evicted her and changed the locks.
“We are just going around in a loop and in the meantime me and my children are homeless, and nobody seems to care,” she told us when we found her on 10 October.
“They are not protecting me or my children, they’ve put us at an even more high risk, but they don’t seem to acknowledge that.”
As we sit on the park bench together, a Southwark housing officer calls confirming that, despite her being on the streets, they would not extend the temporary accommodation. The person on the phone says it was a management decision.
At this point, we call Southwark’s press office and get a very different tone and a sense that the situation isn’t acceptable.
After an anxious wait, by late afternoon Danielle is told she can return to her temporary accommodation.
But while Danielle was on the streets, she took her child for a routine vaccination and was flagged with children’s social services, which adds to her worries.
“I know I am a good mum,” she says. “A doctor might have thought my nails were dirty or I didn’t look like a normal person, but she has to understand, I had nowhere to go that day.
“I had no keys, nowhere to live. I was living out of a black bag in my grandad’s shed. So, what do you expect?”
In a statement, councillor Sarah King from Southwark told us: “This has been a very distressing situation for Danielle and her children, and I hope that she is at least relieved to be in safe accommodation now. We will be working to resolve her housing situation permanently and continue to support her until that happens.”
The council she was applying to told us they believed the issue was now being dealt with by Southwark.
Read more:
Number of children in temporary accommodation hits record high
Temporary housing spending for homeless people soars in London
Housing lawyer Simeon Wilmore told Sky he’s come across this kind of thing “many times” and believes both councils have behaved badly.
“Southwark should have been in contact with the receiving party or receiving local authority and it should be more managed and structured, and she should be at the centre of the decision making,” he said.
“If they have reason to believe she may be eligible for priority needs then the duty of care kicks in. They must accommodate.”
The problem is councils have run out of homes. In Southwark alone 17,700 people are on the borough’s waiting list, nearly treble the figure over five years ago.
On average councils spend 1% of their budget on temporary accommodation, but research by Sky News has found 30 councils spend 10% or more, with several spending over 20% of their overall budgets on homelessness. This is council money going to private landlords.
Adam Hugg, head of housing at the Local Government Association, says the numbers of people needing support “are going through the roof” and the lack of available homes “creates a real challenge”.
He says there is a need for long-term investment to build more council houses as well as reform to housing benefit to make sure more people can be kept in their homes.
Danielle has few home comforts in her temporary flat, which has plain white walls and a TV on the floor. Her wish is for a place she can make her own and paint her daughter’s bedroom walls pink.
She has Halloween decorations on a shelf, while in a corner of the living room there is a long box containing a Christmas tree. On top, there is a child’s yet-to-be-filled-out wish list for Father Christmas, while a pack of red and white baubles and a can of snow spray sit nearby.
“These are all my little Christmas bits I’m going to do with the kids when we eventually have a home,” Danielle says, but she still has no idea when that might be.
“They have told me I’m not going to be here for Christmas,” she says. “So, I don’t know where I’ll be. I just hope it’s not on the street.”
It seems the housing crisis has reached a point where even extreme vulnerability is no guarantee of help.
Councils want more secure longer-term government funding so they can build more homes, but with more children than ever living in temporary accommodation, this is a chronic national problem that will take more than one Christmas to solve.
Leaving school aged 16, pregnant and with no qualifications, Angela Rayner has had a meteoric rise to the second-highest office in the UK – and a spectacular fall from grace.
Sir Keir Starmer’s right-hand woman has now resigned after she admitted to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby she had not paid enough stamp duty on a second home she bought in Hove, East Sussex, earlier this year.
Politics latest: Angela Rayner resigns
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Rayner admits she didn’t pay enough tax
Growing up in poverty on a council estate in Stockport, Greater Manchester, Angela Bowen (her maiden name) and her two siblings were brought up by her grandmother, as her mother had bipolar disorder. She has said they had no books because her mother could not read or write.
She left school at the age of 16, without any qualifications, after becoming pregnant and has said her son, Ryan, “saved me from where I could have been, because I had a little person to look after”.
The teenage mother, now 45, studied part-time and gained a qualification in social care, working for Stockport Council as a care worker.
She entered politics when she was elected as a Unison trade union representative and then convenor of Unison North West – the region’s most senior official, becoming a Labour Party member during her time there.
Angela Rayner in 2016, a year after becoming an MP
She married Unison official Mark Rayner in 2010 and they had two sons, Charlie and Jimmy. Charlie, now 17, was born at 23 weeks old and is disabled.
In 2017, her eldest son Ryan had a son, making Ms Rayner a grandmother at the age of 37. She gave herself the nickname “Grangela”.
She and her husband separated in 2020 and their divorce was completed in 2023. Since 2022, she has been in a relationship with former Labour MP Sam Tarry, with a break in 2023.
Pic: PA
NHS compensation and a trust
Days before her resignation, she revealed compensation was paid to Charlie by the NHS due to the circumstances around his birth, which left him with “life-long disabilities”.
A trust was set up to manage the compensation and to ensure her son was properly looked after, and so that he and his brother could remain living in their family home in Ashton-under-Lyne as part of a “nesting arrangement”, where children of divorced parents live in one house while parents take it in turn to stay there.
She said she sold her stake in that home to the trust in January this year and used that money as a deposit on the Hove flat.
The Labour MP said she was given legal advice that the coastal flat did not have to be considered as a second home for stamp duty but sought further legal counsel after media reports claimed she avoided £40,000 in stamp duty.
Her initial lawyers said they never gave her tax advice and said they were being made “scapegoats”.
Ms Rayner gave a tearful interview to Sky’s Beth Rigby before her resignation, telling the Electoral Dysfunction podcast she had spoken to her family about “packing it all in”.
MP to Labour deputy in five years
Ms Rayner rose up the Labour ranks quickly after becoming an MP for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015.
She was made deputy Labour Party leader in 2020 and was made deputy prime minister and housing, communities and local government secretary after last summer’s general election.
A self-described socialist, “but not a Corbynite” (in her own words), she became well known for calling the Conservatives “scum”, for which she eventually apologised after initially refusing to.
Pic: Reuters
Council house and donor controversies
During last summer’s election campaign, Ms Rayner was investigated by Greater Manchester Police over allegations she misled tax officials in the sale of her council house in 2015 under the right to buy scheme.
She was cleared of any wrongdoing and HMRC concluded she did not owe any capital gains tax. She accused the Tories of using “desperate tactics” against her and went on to win her seat with a 19.1% majority.
Not long after becoming deputy PM and housing secretary, she was embroiled in another scandal in which she was accused of failing to properly register her use of Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli’s $2.5m New York apartment and being given clothes worth £3,550 by him.
She later announced she would no longer accept clothes from donors.
Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner during a visit to a construction site in Cambridge. Pic: PA
Building pledge
One of the Labour government’s biggest pledges was to build 1.5m new homes in this parliament and, as housing secretary, this came under Ms Rayner’s remit.
Sir Keir admitted in December the pledge might be “a little too ambitious”.
Ms Rayner was warned by some of the UK’s biggest developers there was not enough skilled labour to get anywhere near that target, but she has insisted it will happen.
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‘House building target is achievable’
She also led the charge to overhaul planning rules, announcing planning officers would be able to rubberstamp development proposals without permission from council committees if they complied with locally agreed plans.
The changes will be made through the planning and infrastructure bill, which was introduced to parliament in March and is making its way through the Commons.
It also promises to unblock 150 infrastructure projects, such as gigafactories, windfarms and railways, while protecting the environment and nature by setting up a fund to help builders meet their environmental obligations faster by pooling contributions to fund larger nature protections
Right to buy
In February, somewhat controversially given she bought the council house she grew up in, Ms Rayner announced it would be harder for tenants to buy their own council homes to help reverse the housing stock shortage.
She also announced “Awaab’s Law” – introduced by the Conservatives in 2023 and named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died from damp and mould – would come into force in October 2025, forcing social housing landlords to fix dangerous damp and mould in a set amount of time and emergency hazards within 24 hours.
In her role as deputy PM, Ms Rayner occasionally stood in for Sir Keir at Prime Minister’s Questions, one time facing Tory Oliver Dowden and saying it was the “battle of the gingers”.
The Duchess of Kent has died at the age of 92, Buckingham Palace has said.
Katharine – who became the oldest living member of the Royal Family when Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 – was known for consoling Wimbledon finalists, notably a tearful Jana Novotna in 1993.
A skilled pianist, organist and singer, she dropped her HRH style, preferring to be known as Mrs Kent, and retreated from royal life to spend 13 years teaching music at a primary school in Hull.
The duchess famously comforted emotional Wimbledon runner-up Novotna after the 1993 final. Pic: AP
The palace said in a statement on Friday: “It is with deep sorrow that Buckingham Palace announces the death of Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Kent.
“Her Royal Highness passed away peacefully last night at Kensington Palace, surrounded by her family.
“The King and Queen and all Members of The Royal Family join The Duke of Kent, his children and grandchildren in mourning their loss and remembering fondly The Duchess’s life-long devotion to all the organisations with which she was associated, her passion for music and her empathy for young people.”
The Union Flag at Buckingham Palace was lowered to half-mast as a mark of respect shortly after the duchess’s death was announced. A formal framed announcement is displayed on the palace railings.
Katharine meeting Nelson Mandela in 1998. Pic: PA
The duchess, who volunteered for Unicef, is greeted in northern India in 1996. Pic: PA
An online condolence book will be available in the coming days and funeral details will be announced in due course.
Katharine married Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent – who is the cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II – in a grand ceremony at York Minster in 1961.
The couple have three surviving children, George, Earl of St Andrews, Lady Helen Windsor, and Lord Nicholas Windsor.
Read more:
Angela Rayner resigns
Three Britons among Lisbon crash fatalities
The Duke and Duchess of Kent at their York Minster wedding. Pic: PA
The duchess suffered heartbreak when she was forced to have a termination after catching German measles while pregnant in 1975. Two years later, she endured the devastation of giving birth to a stillborn son, Patrick.
She led a separate life from the Duke of Kent for many years but the couple did not divorce – and were said to be closer than ever after Edward suffered a stroke in 2013, which prompted his wife to move back into their Kensington Palace home.
Katharine’s famous Wimbledon moments
Her appearances at Wimbledon, where she presented the winners’ trophies, became a familiar feature of the summer sporting calendar.
Venus Williams receives the women’s singles trophy from the duchess in 2001. Pic: Reuters
In 1993, she put royal formalities and protocol aside to hug tearful runner-up Jana Novotna after she lost the ladies’ singles final to Steffi Graff.
Her relationship with Wimbledon authorities later soured, when she was refused permission to take the young son of murdered headmaster Philip Lawrence into the royal box at the tournament.
Three British nationals are among the 16 who died after the iconic Gloria funicular in Lisbon derailed and crashed, authorities have said.
The crash, which also left 22 people injured, happened at around 6pm on Wednesday.
Footage showed one of the railway’s two carriages practically destroyed and emergency workers pulling people out of the wreckage.
Read more
Everything we know about the Lisbon crash so far
So far, the nationalities of 11 of the people who died have been released by the authorities. They are: five people from Portugal, including four workers at a charity based near the funicular, three from Great Britain, two from Korea, and one person from Switzerland.
Brakeman Andrew Marques is the only person killed to have been identified so far.
All but one of the victims was declared dead at the scene, with the other dying of their injuries in hospital.
Sky News has contacted the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for further information on the three British victims.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he is “deeply saddened” to hear of the British nationals who have died.
“His thoughts are with families and those affected,” they said. “We stand united with Portugal during this time.”
Emergency workers scramble to rescue people at the scene. Pic: Enex
Majority of dead and injured foreign nationals
Among the injured are 12 women, seven men, and a three-year-old child, according to Portugal’s Civil Protection Authority.
Three who suffered injuries are from Portugal, two from Germany, one from Spain, one from Korea, one from Cape Verde, one from Canada, one from Italy, one from France, one from Switzerland, and one from Morocco.
According to CNN Portugal, the two from Germany were the three-year-old child and his mother, who were both pulled from the wreckage.
The lower carriage in the foreground with the remains of the one that crashed further up the hill in Lisbon. Pic: AP
The Gloria funicular connects Lisbon’s Restauradores Square to the Bairro Alto viewpoint
The Gloria funicular is hugely popular with tourists and classified as a national monument.
Its journey between Restauradores Square in downtown Lisbon and the Bairro Alto neighbourhood is just 265m (870ft) and three minutes long, but climbs up a steep hill, with two carriages travelling in opposite directions.
It was believed to be operating at full capacity as rush hour began in the Portuguese capital on Wednesday evening when the top car hurtled down the hill, left the tracks, and crashed into a building 30m (98ft) from the bottom.
According to the people who were in the lower carriage, a few metres into their ascent, it started going backwards. When they saw the other car speeding towards them, they jumped through the windows to escape.
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Lisbon funicular crash: ‘We felt no brakes anymore’
Preliminary crash report due on Friday
It is not clear what caused the crash.
The Portuguese government office for air and rail accident investigations said it has completed its analysis of the crash site and will release a preliminary report on Friday.
One eyewitness who was in the lower carriage told Sky’s Europe correspondent Alistair Bunkall that the brakes appeared to fail.
Engineer Dave Cooper told Sky News on Thursday that the two carriages may have become detached from one another because of a fault with the cables.
The second carriage is lifted from the crash site to be removed overnight on Thursday. Pic: Reuters
The funicular tracks empty after both carriages were removed overnight on Thursday. Pic: AP
Flowers for the victims at the foot of the hill where the funicular is in downtown Lisbon on Friday. Pic: AP
Emergency services and engineers worked throughout the night on Thursday to remove both carriages from the site, while the other two funiculars in the city remained closed until the crash investigation concludes.
A mass was held, attended by Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro and Lisbon mayor Carlos Moedas, in memory of the victims at a nearby church on Thursday evening.
Lisbon declared three days of municipal mourning, while Portugal observed a national day of grief on Thursday.
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