Katharine Swindells
Inside Housing, The GuardianKatharine Swindells is deputy features editor at Inside Housing, covering social housing and homelessness, where her work has seen her named one of journalism’s 30 Under 30 by the Press Awards and PPA. Previously, she was a data reporter at the New Statesman, and is passionate about using human-centred data journalism to shed light into dark corners, such as in her shortlisted project, which tracks the numbers of toddlers and babies living in temporary accommodation in every council in the UK.
Her shortlisted pieces are:
- How many toddlers and babies are living in temporary accommodation in the UK?
- No space to crawl, play or use a potty: why are thousands of young children living in B&Bs?
- Government to start publishing age breakdown of children in temporary accommodation after Inside Housing investigation
Katherine’s project with Inside Housing to count the toddlers and babies living in temporary housing filled a black hole in official data. It was the kind of careful and diligent journalism that shines light on darkness and led to a change in the way officials gathered their figures.
– Robert Booth, Judge, The Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness 2025
