Tenants living in a former Wellington care home have been temporarily re-housed to allow the facility to be re-opened for patients during the coronavirus crisis.

Somerset County Council has been working to re-open a number of former care homes across the county to ensure that enough beds are available for people who cannot be cared for or treated in the comfort of their own home.

To this end, the council recently re-opened the Acacia care home on Hendford Hill in Yeovil, providing 40 beds.

Now the former Popham Court care home in Wellington will be getting the same treatment – meaning the property guardians living there have had to be make way.

Chris Squire, the council’s director of human resources and organisational development, confirmed the news on his official Twitter account on Thursday (April 2).

He said: “We’ll be using Popham Court as a temporary emergency facility, keeping people out of Musgrove Park Hospital. We need 50-60 to staff to cover this. Oh yes, and some PPE.”

After its original closure, Popham Court came to the attention to AdHoc Property Management, a company based in London which takes on empty properties on behalf of their private owners and regenerates them by turning them into temporary affordable housing.

Up to 25 ‘property guardians’ – including people on low incomes and contractors – lived in the building at any one time until the council stepped in, living on rolling 28-day agreements and maintaining the property.

Mr Squire said that new accommodation had been found for all the building’s tenants, stating on Twitter: “The guardians there have relocated so we can convert this to a temporary emergency facility.”

The council has not confirmed how many additional beds the Popham Court site would free up.

But it stated last Monday (March 30) that up to 60 beds could be provided across the county through multiple facilities on top of the 40 beds being freed up in Yeovil.

The council said a further 70 beds on top of this could be made available in the coming weeks as more former care homes were brought back into use.

Daniel Mumby

Local democracy reporter