Lynn Mayell

A WIDOW was told by a housing society that she was being evicted from her marital home just days after she buried her husband.

Lynn Mayell, 55, shared a West Wiltshire Housing Society bungalow in The Croft, Lower Westwood, with her husband Mike, but the tenancy agreement was in his name.

When the couple discovered Mr Mayell's cancer was terminal he applied to transfer the tenancy across to his wife so she could live there after he died.

Mr Mayell passed away on February 29 but a few days after his funeral in March his widow received the letter telling her she was no longer eligible to stay there, as she already owned a house in Poulton, Bradford on Avon.

Mrs Mayell and her husband lived in the Bradford on Avon house for 23 years but they divorced and she could not keep up with the payments.

Their daughter offered to move into the family home with her husband and daughter and start paying the mortgage while Mr Mayell moved into his own bungalow in July 2007.

The couple had since got back together and Mrs Mayell moved in with him in the bungalow as his carer in November. She said: "I've lost my husband and now I've lost my home - how can they be so heartless?

"They see everything in back and white - why can't they see a few grey areas?"

The eviction is the latest in a series of blows Mrs Mayell has received.

In November last year, before they discovered Mr Mayell had cancer, they had a letter from West Wiltshire District Council saying that as he had died they were going to stop his benefits and rethink the housing situation. The couple complained and received an apology for the error at the time.

But in a cruel twist of fate they found out in January that Mr Mayell had in fact got terminal cancer with only a few months left to live.

Mrs Mayell said she has been left with no option but to move back in with her daughter's family in Bradford on Avon in their box room.

She added: "Next door to the bungalow has been empty for four months and the one opposite has been empty for nearly a year - they have so many homes, it seems all wrong."

A spokesman for West Wiltshire Housing Society said they had received no formal complaint from Mrs Mayell.

But she added: "This is a very sad situation and we have dealt with it as sympathetically as possible but as Mrs Mayell already owns her own home she is unable to stay in our accommodation.

"Our homes in Westwood are very popular. The two that are currently empty have been allocated to new tenants and need to have some repairs and work carried out on them before they can move in."

4:29pm Thursday 20th March 2008

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