Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
We lost everything in fire, but nightmare was just beginning
When Lesleigh Gregory’s home was ravaged by fire - destroying everything inside and killing her beloved dog – she turned to the council for help. Eight months on she remains in a tiny, damp hostel, forced to share a single bedroom, and often a bed, with h
When Lesleigh Gregory left for work on the morning of December 7 last year, she wanted for little else in life.
She had three happy, healthy children, a teaching assistant job she loved and a beautiful home for her family and their beloved dog, Sandy.
Four hours later she sat in the waiting room of the council offices in a state of disbelief, a numbered ticket in her hand.
A fire had ripped through her bungalow on a quiet Sturry cul-de-sac, leaving in its wake a blackened shell of lost memories.
Fortunately, her girls, Laiella and Evie, then seven and five, were at school, and one-year-old Albert was with his dad, but Sandy was killed, by the thick black smoke.
“Everything’s gone, you’ve got the clothes on your back,” Lesleigh was told as she was ushered out of class at Parkside primary school.
Her life had literally gone up in flames. Now she was homeless, just another number.
“Looking back now it’s one big blur,” says the 27-year-old.
“I remember my legs going wobbly when they told me what had happened. I didn’t want to believe it. I just felt numb, as if it wasn’t really happening and I was on the outside looking in.”
The fire had destroyed everything, with the cause later found to have been the charger of a cordless vacuum cleaner.
Heartbreaking pictures reveal what was once a loving home, scarred black by an event that would turn the lives of Lesleigh and her children upside down. “We lost absolutely everything, and nothing was insured,” she says.
“All of our clothes, the furniture, the kids’ toys, all my photos, gone. Literally everything we owned.
“Even their baby boxes, my maternity wristbands, their first teeth, letters I had written to them every year since they were born. We were left with nothing.”
But Lesleigh’s nightmare was only just beginning.
With nowhere to live, she was advised to go to the council, which accepted it had a duty of care to rehouse her – but Lesleigh had little idea what lay in store.
Four days later she was given the keys to her new “temporary” home, a bare one-bedroom hostel in Canterbury Road, Herne Bay.
Its only furnishings, illuminated by a pair of large, curtainless windows, were two camp beds, a microwave and a fridge.
Friends and family rallied to make it habitable, finding a sofa for the tiny loungecome-kitchen-come-dining room, and a double bed which dominated the only bedroom.
At 9ft x 8ft there was little room for much else, save for a travel cot Albert had little interest in sleeping in.
What followed was night after night of the family-offour squeezed into one bed, an arrangement that would last for five months until they were able to cram a small single bed into a space beneath the window.
An endless cycle of sleeplessness continues to this day, taking its toll both physically and emotionally on Lesleigh and her children.
“I don’t think any of us have a good night’s sleep since we’ve been here,” she said.
“If someone wakes up, everyone’s up, which was a nightmare when Albert was having bottles.
“It’s had a real effect on all of us, especially the children. They’re always tired and irritable and argue a lot more now. And when one of us is ill, we’re all ill. There’s no escaping it.
“Laiella was sick in the bed once and I had to get them all up, look after her, stop Albert crying and clean the sheets. It’s a real struggle.”
It is their deteriorating health that concerns Lesleigh most. The smell of cannabis fills the stairwells of the building, but inside the air is little cleaner and excessively humid, with Lesleigh unable to properly open the windows for fear of Albert falling out.
Severe asthmatic Laiella has been hospitalised three times since they moved in, with her GP concerned enough to write to the council to explain how she has been forced to increase the strength of the seven-yearold’s inhaler.
“It makes me feel so helpless, like a failure as a mother,” Lesleigh said. “My children are in a situation I can’t get them out of.
“But it also makes me angry that my daughter is having to be medicated just so she can live here. It honestly breaks my heart.”
The dire living arrangements are not just taking