A woman who suffered years of abuse from her daughter's father says she has been "left in overcrowded accommodation in Kingston with her two children for six years".

The woman, who would prefer not to be named so is being referred to as Ms X, left her daughter's father after their daughter was born a year before the pandemic began.

However, Ms X says, "When Covid happened, his abuse got progressively worse since we weren't together and controlling and coercive etc. And then just before Covid in February, I got a Non-Molestation Order on him."

She told Nub News that she has renewed this Order every year for around five years and even obtained a Section 20 against her ex-partner, as she had to involve the police during various incidents.

Ms X was pregnant with her son at the time and contacted Kingston Council seeking emergency accommodation as she could not afford to pay rent.

At the time, the council considered her homeless and found her emergency accommodation.

Ms X and her children have since been placed in three different emergency accommodation locations.

She said: "The last one lasted a year, and then I got moved into this current property, which I will have been in for six years in January, but it's only got two bedrooms."

Ms X says that she has to share a bedroom with her daughter despite them both having additional needs.

"I've got ADHD, and I struggle with it sometimes," she said.

Ms X continued: "I mean, I mask a lot, but I do struggle quite a bit sometimes with overwhelming and not having my own personal space and stuff.

"It's a real struggle at the moment in the house, especially as my daughter is getting older. And she has autism herself, and she has quite high needs, so she needs a lot of support. So, there's nowhere really for me in the home to de-stress etc."

Ms X has recently tried to renew her Non-Molestation Order against her ex-partner, but because there have not been any "major" breaches of the order in the past five years, "the judge basically said that I couldn't extend it because it would be limiting as human rights just because he's only done little things like waiting at bus stops," says Ms X.

She added: "The relationship was really awful for me. He was physically and mentally abusive. He pushed me in front of a car. There's a lot that happened."

As Ms X's Order against her ex-partner expired in October of this year, she contacted Kingston Council in January 2025 to be moved again because her ex-partner knows her current address and she is worried what he might do with the Order expired, but the Council has not helped.

She said: "I need to be moved because he knows where we live. And once that order expired, I know what he's like. He will seek us out and he will try and harm me. I know he will for a fact."

Ms X says she has been "fighting" since January to be moved.

She explained that while she desperately needs to be moved due to the expiration of the Order against her ex-partner, she also needs to move due to the size of the property.

"We are overcrowded," she said.

Ms X explained that although she has provided the council with six supporting letters from her GP, her daughter's therapist, and her children's schools, Kingston Council said "that the property was found to only be unsuitable due to overcrowding, not safety, and not [the family's] medical needs".

She says that her daughter was receiving therapy, but no longer can as she does not have her own bedroom.

Ms X's daughter has Attachment Disorder.

Ms X said: "So part of my daughter's therapy is obviously training her and teaching her how to not be so attached to me.

"We waited two years for that therapy, and we had to stop and they put us at the bottom of the list again.

"Mental health support is really hard to come by, and you have to wait so long. I've waited so long for it to be told we can't continue it unless the council are able to move us."

Ms X says that she has been going "back-and-forth" with the council about the matter "literally every week" since January and has had help from a solicitor.

Her solicitor informed her that due to the council's Allocations Policy, which it rewrote in 2024, Ms X and her children should be able to "jump the queue" for emergency accommodation as they "have issues around [their] personal protection".

Ms X thus brought this up to the council.

She told Nub News: "So, I questioned that and I said, 'look, we're unsafe'. We're going to be unsafe by October. I need to jump the queue.

"And I said, 'I'm not someone that wants to jump the queue, but I need to safeguard my children'."

Ms X even got a supporting letter from Social Services.

"I've followed all the processes," she said.

Following this, Ms X reports that the council told her they will try and find her a temporary three-bed property.

However, she says, "While I understand that's great, I know it's not. We can't keep moving. We can't then get given this property and then move again in two years' time. It's just not feasible."

Ms X says that since her Order against her ex-partner expired, he has called her intercom at her current property pretending to be a Boiler Man, stood on the boarder of her estate, and tried to break in.

"It has gotten to the point where I'm so scared of everything, even going out the house, like I'm now having panic attacks," she said.

Because of this, Ms X said she nearly crashed when driving her daughter to school last week because she had a panic attack.

She said: "So, I had to pull over and then walk the rest of the way. And I haven't driven since, and I don't want to. I'm too scared to get in the car in case I have a panic attack."

The mother has also not been to work in two weeks due to her fear.

"The root of it is if we had been moved in the last few months when I said all this would start happening, we wouldn't be in this situation," Ms X said.

She says that she then "went down the complaints procedure route" with the council, but it told her "because it's a statutory duty, it's to do with the law", so it could not take her complaint further.

The council told Ms X to take her complaint to its housing manager, which she did, but Ms X has not had a response.

"It's a joke," she said. "I'm at breaking point."

She says that she has lived in the borough for 30 years and followed all the right procedures to be moved so cannot understand why Kingston Council is not helping her.

Ms X reports that there is an empty three-bed property owned by the council above her flat, which has been empty for eight months.

She said: "For them to tell me that there's no available properties, it's very hard to believe when there's one sitting there now for eight months.

" I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall because I find it completely unbelievable." I feel that the council has failed me."

Ms X says she believes the council is being hypocritical with its campaigns against Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG).

She said: "It's all well and good having these lovely sayings like 'Kingston's stronger together' or 'we support violence against women and girls'.

"But then when you've got a resident who's lived in the borough for 30 years and is saying they are experiencing violence themselves, why have you got this big initiative around it if you're not doing anything about it, when something actually happens, it's all well and good just putting out posters saying we support it, but they're not supporting someone who needs support."

Nub News has contacted Kingston Council for comment, but it has failed to respond.