THE elderly and infirm residents of a Holcombe care home were given just four days' notice this week to pack their bags and to find new homes.
On Monday, Sheldon Davey, a director of the company that owns the Gatehouse Nursing Home in Holcombe Drive, told Devon Social Services that the nine residents would need to be out by today.
Mr Davey gave no reason and the Post was unable to contact him.
The decision – which was greeted with a mixture of shock, anger and bewilderment – also means that more than 20 members of staff have lost their jobs.
An emergency team of social workers has spent this week at the home, in efforts to find new accommodation for the residents. Many of them are immobile and need permanent nursing care.
A spokesman for Devon County Council said that it was directly responsible for five patients, but was also overseeing the welfare of the four others.
'I am unsure of the contractual obligations of the owner, but I would expect at least a month's notice to be normal in such circumstances,' he said. 'We are consulting with patients and relatives about their care needs, and have identified vacancies in the Teignbridge area.'
The home's longest-staying resident, 83-year-old Dorothy Crosland, only discovered the news when cleaners began to pack her clothes in black bin liners.
'Why are you doing that?' she asked them. 'Am I going on holiday?'
'No, you're having to leave,' was the reply.
Mrs Crosland, who has her own room at the home, is bed-bound and awaiting a hip-replacement operation.
'I like this room very, very much, and I'm really sorry to be leaving after four years,' she said. 'But the whole place has been going down.'
Her daughter, Barbara Hughes, flew in from Canada this week to be given the news of the closure on her arrival.
'It's such a bombshell,' she said. 'I'm appalled and disgusted. It's so upsetting for these old people. I didn't know that they could do this.'
She said that she had had an idea that things were wrong.
'I've seen empty potties in the bath, and they're slow to empty the commodes,' she said.
Jennifer Hamlin, acting deputy matron, said: 'Things have not been well for a while.'
Mrs Hamlin, who has found another job, said that she had never had a contract of employment and as far as she was aware nobody had.
Staff did not know whether they would be paid this month, she said.
Last month, Mr Davey's father, Richard, was given planning permission by Teignbridge Council to demolish the Victorian-period nursing home and to build five houses on the site.
Mr Davey Snr has been reported as saying that he needed seven homes on the site. Since he was refused permission for that number, he said one of his options was to try to take asylum seekers.