Our Drones Went In. Here Is What Was Left Behind.

The fleet

Regular readers will know this site has no budget, no office and no staff. What it does have, it turns out, is a fleet of state-of-the-art drones: whisper-quiet, smaller than a pack of nappies, and fitted with cameras sharp enough to read a price sticker through a pile of bin bags.

We sent them to Pontypool. They went into the two shops Jayne’s Baby Bank no longer holds, 5 Crane Street and 6 Commercial Street, after both had been taken back by their landlords, and came back with more than a hundred pictures.

We will not be saying how. Drone technology is a closely guarded secret, and ours is guarded more closely than most. What we will say is that every picture was checked before publication, and that a dozen of them are below. The rest are in the gallery at the end.

First, how the shops came to be empty of her, because the order of events matters.

How long she stayed

The two shops were knocked through into one. Each had its own lease, and each lease ran out long before she left.

5 Crane Street

• 17 January 2023. A three-year lease begins, £4,800 a year, in the name “Miss Jayne-Anne Carrie-Anne Ridsdale”.
• September 2025. An independent fire risk assessment grades the risk to life “Substantial Risk” (the dossier).
• 16 January 2026. The lease ends. No signed renewal has ever been produced.
• 3 March 2026. South Wales Fire and Rescue serves a Prohibition Notice for fire loading, meaning how much in the building would burn, and the means of escape. At a spot check on 7 April an officer records that “two members of the public were observed entering the shop” (the fire disclosure). An Enforcement Notice follows.
• 2 April 2026. Torfaen Council: four complaints about the premises, “continuing to investigate”.
• 24 July 2026. An environmental-health prohibition on 5b Crane Street, the flat above, for water getting in, damp and mould. A notice is also served on the landlord company.
• 15 August 2026. The landlord company posts a notice that it has taken possession and secured the building because of health and safety risks, pending remedial work. That is 211 days after the lease ended (the end of the road).

6 Commercial Street

• 27 October 2024. A one-year lease begins, £6,600 a year, signed “Carrie-Anne Ridsdale” (not even my name).
• 26 October 2025. The lease ends.
• 19 June 2026. SSE arrives with a warrant, a locksmith and a van. A Jayne’s Baby Bank representative stands in the doorway trying to block entry. The lease has been over for 236 days (lights out).
• 15 September 2026. The landlord’s Formal Notice, 324 days after the lease ended. She must not enter without his permission, and has 21 days to collect her things “by appointment only” (four shutters in four months).
• 6 October 2026. The last of the 21 days. Police are called to the shop and she is inside. The landlord tells them no permission was given; his understanding is that the secured door was forced. Officers tell them to leave (told not to enter).
• 11 October 2026. Police arrest Raymond Derek Watkins at the shop and lead him away in handcuffs. He has since been released (updated 12 October).

What she has said

Her account of how the shops ended has changed with the week. These are her words, spelling as posted.

we were evacuated by health and saftey

Her post, 6 October 2026, 11:53. Archive

No legal and lawful eviction has ever take place in either shop.

Same post, 6 October 2026. Archive

The council has ordered the landlords to fix the shops and renovate them to a rentable conditions before they re rent to anyone

Her post, 13 October 2026, 23:01. Archive

Please can you report to:- Health and Saftey, Trading standards and South Wales fire this week please . State that the shops are still on prohibitions and the landlords are responsible

Her post, 27 October 2026, 08:42. Archive

And on 26 September, on video: “If I want to get back in, I’m going to go through the bloody holes in the roof” (from a transcript of the recording). Our drones found the holes. They did not find her.

Each of these claims was checked in our October review (fifty claims). This time we can show you the rooms.

What the drones saw

The stairs

A fire Prohibition Notice is about whether people can get out. The March notice at 5 Crane Street was for fire loading and the means of escape. These are the stairs.

The bags

Upstairs, room after room is filled with black bags, boxes, toys and clothes: the stock of a baby bank that collected donations for families. Some rooms can only be seen from the doorway.

On bare floors, bags of stock sit beside pools of liquid.

The shop floor

Downstairs, where customers came in, the counters and shelves are buried.

The building

Then there is the building itself: damage that has been waiting for repairs.

Some rooms at Crane Street had already been emptied of stock when the drones flew through. With nothing in them, the building speaks for itself.

Whose mess?

Damp, mould, a hole in a ceiling and plaster off the walls are repairs for a building’s owner. But an owner can only repair a building it can get into.

For 211 days after the Crane Street lease ended, and 324 days after the Commercial Street lease ended, she was still inside. When SSE came with a warrant in June, someone from Jayne’s Baby Bank stood in the doorway to try to stop them. The council’s damp-and-mould notice on the flat above Crane Street was served in July, while she still held the shop below.

She knew what was coming. On the night the Commercial Street notice went up, she told her viewers:

So where we’re at now is P2. I think we’re going to have to move out. Because they’re going to have to do the work in there and they, you know, they need the access.

Livestream, around midnight, 15 to 16 September 2026 (transcript; reported here)

The landlords got the buildings back in August and September. Even then she did not stay out. Three weeks after the Commercial Street notice, police found her inside, and the landlord says the door had been forced. Five days after that, police arrested Raymond Derek Watkins at the shop.

The bags are a separate matter. The fire service’s March notice was about what was stored in the shop and whether people could get out, and it was served while she was trading there. The bags on the stairs did not come with the building.

Nor were the rooms stripped before the drones arrived. On 11 October she thanked a landlord and “his team for removing and delivering more of the baby banks equiptment and stock today” (archive). Whatever went back to her, this is what was still there.

She now asks her followers to tell the regulators the landlords are responsible. On 7 October she told those followers this:

They really fell for the ‘I want to live in P2 forever’ bull I fed them.

Her post, 7 October 2026, 18:52. Archive

The drones do not take sides. They just take pictures.

Every picture

The full set from both shops is below. Tap any picture to see it full size.

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