From rent strikes to squatting, a new show reveals how people have managed to keep a roof over their head in London – and the mould and astronomical rents that persist

Charles Booth’s pioneering poverty maps of Victorian London show a vivid colour-coded warren of streets, alleyways and slums tightly packed together. Those marked black and dark blue were classed as being “very poor”, defined by “chronic want”. The light blue ones were poor – “18s to 21s a week for a moderate family”. Pink streets housed those who were “fairly comfortable”, and those where the wealthy lived were marked in yellow.

The maps by the British social reformer are the 19th-century equivalent of the modern-day indices of deprivation, which rank every geographic area of the UK by its level of social and economic disadvantage. Comparing the two shows how much has changed in the past 150 years – but also what hasn’t. Historical slums have been cleared away and housing conditions have generally improved, but extreme poverty and extreme wealth continue to live side by side in the capital.

Building safety regulator delays leave London tower block beset by security and vandalism problems

It’s a sunny day with bright blue skies in north London, but you wouldn’t know that in Natasha Dyett’s flat. Most of the rooms are consumed in shadow, while her teenage son’s bedroom is almost completely dark, apart from a few slits of light coming through the window.

She lives in Archway Heights, a nine-storey block of flats that has been covered in scaffolding for more than six years for cladding works that still haven’t started.

Exclusive: rules on same-sex wards could lead to delays in care, discrimination and animosity between groups, finds internal assessment

Trans people could face delays and a greater risk of “corridor care” under new NHS England guidance that means they will no longer be able to use same-sex wards, according to an internal report.

An NHS England impact assessment, seen by the Guardian, stated that trans people may also potentially experience discrimination and this could lead to them “avoiding accessing healthcare at all”.

Rules mean single-sex wards, toilets and changing rooms will now be used by people based on their biological sex

Trans women will no longer be placed on female-only wards under new NHS England guidance on single-sex spaces.

The new rules, published on Thursday, mean single-sex wards, toilets and changing rooms will be used by people based on their biological sex, not their gender identity.

Survivors had criticised ‘outrageous’ appointment of Laura Johnson to £150,000 job with Barnet Group

A housing director who oversaw cost cutting at Grenfell Tower before the fatal fire has left a £150,000-a-year senior council housing role after a backlash from bereaved families and survivors.

Laura Johnson was the director of housing at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) at the time of the 2017 Grenfell fire which killed 72 people, and was criticised in the subsequent inquiry for her role in budget-cutting decisions prior to the blaze.

In first half of this year 1,600 tags also had no signal for over two weeks, highlighting scale of probation crisis

More than 5,000 offenders went unmonitored in the first half of the year because electronic tags were not installed, while 1,600 tags had no signal for more than two weeks due to faults, a report has found.

The Institute for Government (IfG) has revealed the full scale of the crisis in the probation system in England and Wales, concluding that “rationing probation supervision” due to a lack of staff meant sentences imposed by the court had become “essentially a fiction” for most offenders.