Families living in an area with acute housing shortages are being threatened with eviction by the local council on the grounds that their homes should be used only for holiday lets.
The families, living at the St Merryn Holiday Village in north Cornwall, face homelessness and the prospect of statutory accommodation by the same authority in costly bed-and-breakfast hotels. Housing charity Shelter says the action by North Cornwall district council is "nonsensical".
The holiday village comprises 150 bungalows and is three miles outside fashionable Padstow, rated last month by the Halifax bank as the most expensive seaside town in the country. The families, who rent bungalows from their various private owners, have received council notices enforcing a holiday occupancy clause that prevents permanent residency.
Some of the residents have lived on the site for years and are appealing against their eviction - not least because, confusingly, the council has in the past allowed dozens of other properties on the same site to be released from the holiday occupancy clause.
For 31-year-old lone mother Karen Denley, who has two sons, Tylor, eight, and Connor, two, the prospect of eviction is frightening. She has refurbished her three-bedroom bungalow with the help of her parents, who live in a neighbouring property where permanent occupation is permitted.
Denley is doubly perplexed because the council has previously rubber-stamped her accommodation for housing benefit purposes. "I can't understand why the council is doing this when it approved my tenancy agreement and gave me a payment card dated up to March 2003," she says. "My children were ill in their previous home, because of the stresses of living there. Now they are happy. If they have to move, it will destroy them."
According to the council, the site was deemed suitable for holiday use only when approved in the 1960s. It was developed into a holiday park in the 1970s, with more units added later. At the time, some of the older bungalows were given permanent residency because of a loophole in the law. This has since been closed.
Neil Pendleton, the council's director of community services, accepts the situation is far from ideal, but insists the council cannot lift the holiday-only conditions on the remaining bungalows to create affordable housing.
"St Merryn is isolated from jobs and services," Pendleton says. "In the past, the council granted permanent residency, but in 1996 it was decided that the bungalows should be kept for holiday use. We have to enforce that - but we are sympathetic to people."
Along with nine other families, Denley has lodged an appeal against the enforcement notice. And she is being backed by Simon Morland, who owns her bungalow.
"There is a massive housing shortage in the area and the bungalows in the village are perfectly sited for residential use," Morland says. "The housing department agreed to Karen moving in and she and her dad put in £3,000-worth of labour doing the place up. Now the council is going back on its promise, which is ridiculous."
