Porlock eviction goes ahead as neighbour offers four-week reprieve for Pam

TENANT Pam Leach was today (July 27) being evicted from the Exmoor village home in which she has lived for the past four-and-a-half years.

The Free Press reported earlier this month how Ms Leach was faced with becoming homeless because of a lack of affordable properties due to so many being bought as second homes or Airbnb holiday lets.

However, Ms Leach, of Doverhay, Porlock, managed to buy some time when a friendly neighbour on Wednesday offered the use of a holiday cottage for the next four weeks.

Ms Leach said: “It is only four weeks but it is a reprieve and it gives me some more thinking time.”

The neighbour, who had read in the Free Press about Ms Leach’s plight, will also allow her to keep her three cats in the cottage.

Bailiffs were scheduled to return to the Doverhay property today after serving her with an eviction notice because her landlords wanted to downsize and live in it.

Retired graphics designer Ms Leach was born in a National Trust cottage in Allerford, just outside Porlock, and was brought up in West Somerset before moving to live in Barbados.

When she returned to the UK she was unable to secure a National Trust home and found her options for renting elsewhere in the district were limited because the housing pool had been reduced by ‘outsiders’ buying up properties to use at weekends or for holiday lets.

West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, who has been involved in helping Ms Leach, has supported Government proposals for rented housing sector regulations to restrict a proliferation of short-term holiday lets in rural communities.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said as well as the impact on people such as Ms Leach, the number of holiday lets also made it difficult for businesses to recruit staff who were unable to find anywhere local to live.

The Government has also introduced a Renters (Reform) Bill to stop ‘no fault evictions’, which is expected to become law by the autumn of this year.

Exmoor’s newly-created Local Community Network (LCN) of parish councils and local agencies has made the Airbnb and second homes issue one of its top priorities to try to tackle.