Carrie Howarth, 37, has been fined twice for taking her autistic son Sebastian on holiday during term-time, and has been threatened with prosecution if it happens again.
“We couldn’t go away during the summer because everywhere’s far too busy, and he can’t manage it,” she said.
“Sebastian struggles with all the noise, with all the people. It would just be too overwhelming.”
What we know about Ranulph Fiennes care home row
Once described as “the world’s greatest living explorer”, Sir Ranulph Fiennes disappeared from public view in 2024.
Members of his family allege they have not been allowed to visit him.
Who is Ranulph Fiennes?
- Ranulph Fiennes, 82, is a famed explorer, known for his Transglobe Expedition.
- He is related to actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes.
- In September this year, his relatives raised the alarm that they had not been allowed to visit him.
- Fiennes disappeared from public in 2024 after opening up about his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
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Allegations of a family rift
In September, published its first story airing concerns from friends who alleged Fiennes’ wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, was not allowing anyone else to see him.
The newspaper reported allegations that Fiennes had been moved around multiple care homes under false names.
Campaign to free him
The explorer’s stepson, Alex Millington-Cotes, has said he is desperate to visit Fiennes again, and told the BBC he wants power of attorney removed from his mother.
“He’s not an isolated type of person, and so to see him isolated now is very painful,” he said.
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King urged to help
- Concerned friends reportedly wrote to King Charles, an old friend of Fiennes’, but the Palace was also unable to get through to him.
- Alex Millington-Cotes has launched a fundraiser to “locate and safeguard” the explorer.
Louise Millington-Cotes has not responded to the allegations
When you could buy gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown
Step aside banana bread, scientists at a start-up in Norwich have created bananas that keep their colour in your fruit bowl for longer before turning brown.
The flashy new fruit can even stay yellow for up to 24 hours after peeling.
Everything you need to know
- Tropic Biosciences has developed gene-edited bananas which can last longer.
The start-up used the CRISPR-Cas9 process to tweak three genes which make bananas turn brown.
It means the fruit does not produce the polyphenol oxidase enzyme responsible for pesky fruit-bowl browning.
The bananas have marketing approval from the environment secretary but must pass the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) checks before they can go on sale.
Why is this significant?
According to Gilad Gershon, the CEO of Tropic, the edited bananas can resist browning by an extra day or two. He said this would “open up a lot of value in reducing waste”.
It is not known how long it could take for the FSA to approve the bananas for safe sale in the UK. If they make it through, they will need to be labelled as “gene edited”.
How long will the warm weather last for?
Tuesday is set to be warm and sunny, with a brief spike in temperatures, but later in the week, the mercury will struggle to get beyond 20°C.
Warmer than average
On Tuesday, temperatures are set to hit 26°C in London and parts of the South East, continuing into a muggy night.
Met Office meteorologist Clare Nasir forecasts:”A breezy day, but also a warm one… temperatures today will be well above average for this time of year, particularly for England and Wales.”
Fresher end to the week
- Nasir warned there is a risk of “some intense bursts of rain” followed by showers on Wednesday.
- The Met Office forecast that the weather will turn “a little fresher from Thursday with showers or longer spells of rain at times, mainly in the west”.
- As the week goes on, temperatures are set to drop, with very few areas expected to reach 20°C or above.
Snooker champion Graeme Dott jailed for child sex abuse
Former snooker world champion Graeme Dott has been found guilty of sexually abusing two primary school-age children.
In August, he was found guilty of two counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour and on Tuesday he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
What you need to know
The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Dott subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse, with the girl targeted between 1993 and 1996 and the boy between 2006 and 2010.
The jury heard Dott exposed himself in front of both children, touched them inappropriately and kissed them.
What did the victims say?
- One of Dott’s victims, now in her 40s, told the court Dott had sexually abused her on multiple occasions.
- The second victim, now in his late 20s, also said he was sexually abused on multiple occasions.
- Lord Harrower, the judge, told Dott he had “robbed the complainers of a significant part of their childhood”.
- He added the behaviour bore “the hallmarks of grooming”.
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Men feel happier than women about how they look, study finds
Researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School also found men overestimated their IQ, while British people generally rated themselves less attractive than other nationalities.
What did the study find?
- Men consistently gave themselves higher ratings for physical attractiveness than women.
- Participants scored themselves between 0 and 100.
- On average, men scored 6-8 per cent higher than women.
- How attractive the participants were considered by other people was not part of the study.
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A closer look at the study
The study also found that men and women with higher IQs tended to rate themselves as less attractive.
Britons generally rated themselves less attractive than their American, Australian, Canadian and South African counterparts. Researchers suggested this could be a symptom of British manners, with more emphasis on “modesty or understatement”.
What does this mean?
Professor Adrian Furnham, who led the study, noted men often overestimate their IQ, while women typically underestimate it.
He said the similar gap in attractiveness self-ratings could be another indication of “male hubris versus female humility”. He added that more intelligent people could be “more honest”.
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How the UK could rejoin the EU, step by step
Labour grandees have urged Andy Burnham to start preparing to reverse Brexit – but high hurdles would have to be overcome.
Why is it coming up now?
Sadiq Khan said he wants Britain to return to the customs union “almost straight away” and provision in the next Labour manifesto to reverse Brexit without a referendum.
However, experts are sceptical. Polls indicate a narrow majority of Britons support the idea of rejoining, but it may require more support before we could rejoin.
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What the process could look like
Experts warned it could also take five to 10 years to get back in.
Here’s how rejoining might look:
- A second vote is not technically necessary but leading experts think a referendum would likely be needed to provide a stable mandate to start negotiations with the EU.
- If the UK applied to rejoin, the EU would need to ensure the applicant met the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria.
- If talks then began, there would be a series of big issues to resolve.
- The EU could demand that Britain use the Euro and become part of the Schengen Area.
The expert analysis
Experts disagree on the likelihood the UK could be allowed to opt-out of either the Schengen Area or the Euro. Dr Thomas Sampson, economist and Brexit expert at LSE, suggested it is possible the EU would be willing to let Britain rejoin under the same deal.
But others suggested the EU would want to lock the UK into the Euro to “make it harder for [us] to ever leave”.
- The European Commission would need to approve any deal for the UK to rejoin. A majority of MEPs in the European Parliament would also have to vote in favour and all the bloc’s member states.
- Professor Catherine Barnard, an expert in EU law at the University of Cambridge, thinks negotiations and ratification could take as long as a decade.
- If talks did not start until after a Labour general election victory in 2029, it could be 2040 before Britain was back in the bloc.
Watch more from The i Paper
New treatment for ultra-rare ‘second skeleton’ disorder
Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a “devastating, irreversible” genetic condition.
What is FOP?
- According to the charity FOP Friends, there are around 70 known people with FOP in the UK.
It is one of the rarest diseases in the world, affecting around one in a million people.
FOP is a genetic condition which leads to the body creating extra bones in locations where they should not form, including inside muscles, tendons and ligaments.
What is the treatment?
A new “disease modifying” treatment has been shown to reduce new bone growth by more than 90 per cent, reduce flare-ups and potentially offer hope for new surgical options in the future.
The drug garetosmab is an antibody that blocks a protein called activin A, which has been found to be critical in the development of new abnormal growth development in people with FOP.
63 adults were involved in the trial, which saw a massive reduction in flare-ups in the groups which received the treatment.
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Writing in , the authors said they expect the drug to enable “long term preservation of mobility and function”.
Chris Bedford-Gay, FOP Friends founder, said the community “has desperately waited for a way to stop FOP in its tracks”. He added this “is the moment a life-changing treatment comes that bit closer”.
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Howarth is among an increasing number of parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who are being fined for school absences in some areas, with sanctions doubling in the worst hotspots.
In 2024-25, at least 14 councils issued more fixed-penalty notices to families of children with the highest level of SEND support than in the previous year, according to freedom of information requests shared with The i Paper.
In Blackpool, the parents of five children with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) – a legal document that sets out SEND support – were prosecuted over school attendance, according to council data obtained by Teneo International School.
‘Troubling gap’ in council fine records
Families of children with SEND were fined 17,520 times by 43 councils in 2024-25, and those with EHCPs were sanctioned 3,883 times by 29 councils.
However, most councils do not record whether absence fines involved a pupil with SEND, so the number underestimates the bigger picture across the country.
Ellie Costello, executive director at campaign group Square Peg, said a Government crackdown on school absences in 2024 had partly fuelled the increase. Under the rules, schools must consider fines if a child misses five or more days without authorisation.
Parents can only be fined twice within a three-year period, and then face potential prosecution for additional absences.
Overall, the total number of penalty notices for unauthorised school absences grew from about 487,000 in 2023/24 to 493,000 last year, according to the Department for Education (DfE).
While the Department for Education says the majority of fines are for parents taking their child out of school for unauthorised holidays, most councils were unable to say whether the children that were absent had been unwell.
Campaigners are concerned that this means authorities are unaware if the attendance crackdown is unfairly impacting parents of vulnerable children, who are more likely to be off school with illness.
Taryn Jankes, of Teneo International School, said this was a “troubling” gap in records.
“You cannot claim to support vulnerable children while fining them at a rising rate and declining to look at why they were absent,” she said.
Madeleine Cassidy, chief executive of SEND charity Ipsea, added that the findings highlighted a “serious problem in the system”.
She saidd: “Where a child or young person with SEND is too anxious or unwell to attend school, or where their needs have not been properly identified or supported, enforcement does not address the underlying issue.
“Families need the right support to be put in place, not penalties when the system has failed to meet a child’s needs.”
The areas where fines are rising
Few councils were able to provide data on absence fines for pupils with EHCPs across multiple years.
Out of 25 councils that did, 14 saw rises. The London borough of Hounslow experienced the biggest jump in absence for pupils who had EHCPs. Penalties nearly tripled from 23 to 65.
Fines more than doubled in Halton, Cheshire, from 23 to 54; and in Redcar and Cleveland, from 20 to 42.
Other areas experiencing significant increases included the London borough of Sutton (110 per cent) Stockport (80 per cent), Liverpool (71 per cent) and Southampton (46 per cent).
Manchester, Solihull, Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Merton, Cornwall, and Central Bedfordshire also disclosed rises.
Manchester issued 617 fixed-penalty notices – more than any other council – up from 489 the previous year.
‘Families need support not penalties’
Costello said the criminalisation of school absences was “perpetuating Dickensian inequalities by disproportionately targeting vulnerable families with fines and prosecutions.
She said children with SEND face “huge challenges” and often miss school because they are unwell.
She also accused councils of “using attendance fines as a cash cow to build a service that enforces the collection and referrals of fines and prosecutions”.
Councils have long been allowed to use the money they raise from fines to administer more enforcement. But the rules were broadened two years ago to allow them to spend any funds raised on more general attendance support, such as employing dedicated staff to help schools and families.
Costello said fines and threats of prosecution placed a “huge amount of stress” on families, even leading to self-harm and marriage breakdowns in some cases.
Jolanta Lasota, chief executive of Ambitious about Autism, said absence was “not a choice” for many autistic children, who can find school “overwhelming” and inaccessible if their needs are not met.
“It is particularly worrying that most councils do not record whether a child was absent because of anxiety, mental health challenges or other medical needs,” she added.
“Without this information, it is impossible to understand the true causes of absence or whether enforcement action is being taken against families who are already struggling to secure support.”
A petition calling on the Government to ban school fines has been signed by nearly 140,000 people. The petition claims fines are “ineffective, punish families and have become a stealth tax”.
Some parents also believe it is unfair to be fined for taking children on holidays during term-time, particularly when breaks in the school holidays can cost thousands of pounds more.
Howarth took Sebastian, who has an EHCP, to Olympia in Greece in 2024, and to Florida in 2025.
Teachers told her that the weeks he would be away would be quiet and Sebastian, who is one of the top academic performers in his class, had no problem catching up when he returned.
Sebastian has difficulties with personal space and is very tactile, which would be “nigh on impossible” to control in a resort full of people, his mother said. However, the headteacher told her council officials “just look at the numbers” and that, even though she would have preferred to approve the holiday, she would likely receive a fine from them.
“We’re already struggling to be SEND parents, and you’re going to hit us again,” Howarth said. “How is that okay?”
The first fine in a three-year period is £80 if paid within 21 days, or £160 if paid within 28 days. If a parent gets a second fine within three years, this leads to a £160 fine – and non-payment can lead to court action.
Councils say fines always ‘last resort’
Councils including Hounslow, Halton, Central Bedfordshire and Surrey all said their schools work with families to understand school absence. Where fines are considered, individual circumstances are always considered, they added.
Hounslow said issuing fines is a “last resort”. Halton said it had a duty to promote attendance in line with national guidance. Formal enforcement measures are used when support and engagement have not led to improvement.
Solihull Council said fines were mainly issued when children were taken out of school for holidays in term time, and had decreased overall as a result of the new government guidance which prioritises supporting families in the first instance.
“We do not pursue fines where we know a child is absent due to being unwell,” it added.
Manchester City Council said 92 per cent (567) of the 617 notices issued in 2024-25 were for unauthorised absences other than holidays. Circumstances where children have medical needs are recorded as authorised absences by schools.
Central Bedfordshire said that if a child had SEND, an EHCP or health issues affecting attendance, schools must discuss the case with a school attendance officer before requesting a notice.
Southampton City Council said it reviewed every absence on a “case-by-case basis”.
The other local authorities were approached for comment. The Department for Education declined to comment.
Do you have experience with school absence fines? We’d love to hear from you – email alexa.phillips@theipaper.com