A MOTHER forced to flee her home after a narrow escape from disaster fears her daughters' education will suffer as the alternative accommodation they have been offered is too far away from school.

Ms Diane King, 27, and her two daughters, Jessica, aged seven, and Laura, aged five, were forced to move out of their home in Jellicoe Road, West Watford, after a van smashed into the front wall two weeks ago making the building unsafe.

Repairs to the house are expected to take longer than a month and Ms King claims that alternative accommodation provided by their landlords the St Pancras Housing Association is not suitable.

A spokesman for the housing association said that staff were doing everything in their power to help but she said she feels her family have been "abandoned".

They are currently living in a house in Garston and Ms King says that without a car she will not be able to get to her job as a health care assistant at Watford General Hospital or take her children to their school in Croxley Green.

She said: "I have been made homeless through no fault of my own and I don't see why my two children should suffer. They are at an important stage of their education and I don't want them to miss school.

"We need to back in the West Watford area for my work and the kids need the stability of going to school."

The girls are due back at St Anthony's Roman Catholic school at the beginning of September but it looks unlikely that the repairs to their home will be finished by then.

However, the spokesman for St Pancras Housing Association said: "We are working on the assumption that the family will be back in their own home by the time the children go back to school.

"I would like to stress that the house they are in at the moment is temporary accommodation."

August 22, 2001 15:16

Jo Stephenson