00:00I'm Tracy and I'm at Westfields just outside Midland in the Scottish Borders.
00:05I'd like to show you around where I live and I call home which I am fighting to
00:10stay here with the council. The static has been my home for the last 14 months.
00:19It suits me. I don't need anything bigger. It's quiet. I moved here because of my mental health.
00:28I suffer chronic COPD, depression. I've had four mini strokes. So I wanted somewhere where I could
00:36live and have my animals and live out the rest of my days. So now we come to the animals.
00:46A lot of these are rescues that we have here because I can't bear to see any animals being
00:51put to sleep. So we go down here we have some mum, dad and the babies that are not so baby anymore.
01:10The two geese, somebody couldn't care for them anymore so they brought them to us.
01:18They'll live out their days free ranging here. The babies are our size now.
01:43Just mind your head.
01:47So
02:03the situation is we bought the property as residential. All of the paperwork says residential.
02:11No one once said that we were not allowed to live here. We moved on to the land 14 months ago.
02:21Absolutely brilliant. We got a new static because the static that was here was falling apart.
02:26Was living here quite happy for 14 months, for four months and a knock at the door and it was
02:32the enforcement officers telling me that I had no right to be living here and there was an
02:38enforcement notice on the land and I wouldn't be able to stay. So it's rushing around trying to
02:47find somebody that can help us in the legal department with planning and everything.
02:51We put in for planning, they rejected it, we appealed. The appeal then went to the councillors
03:03and I believe there was a couple of councillors that have said they need more information because
03:08obviously this is my home. I have nowhere else to live. These animals, there's over 100 animals here
03:16and they rely on me. The council want to know why I'm not living somewhere else.
03:22I only ride a mobility scooter because of my health. So there is nowhere and with the housing
03:28crisis there is nowhere for me to live that I can get here three or four times a day to check the
03:35animals and I'm certainly the animals welfare come first. So for me to move off of the land
03:43the animals will suffer and my mental health will suffer.
Comments