A GRIEVING family has been told it will ‘take time’ before they find out how a woman died suddenly while on holiday in West Somerset.

Bristol woman Zoe Loudon-Godfrey, aged 50, collapsed in a Porlock holiday home last May.

An air ambulance flew Ms Loudon-Godfrey to Musgrove Park Hospital, in Taunton, where she was put on a life support system which was later turned off and she died.

Now, her mother Susan Hodgetts, of Bournemouth, has complained to the BBC about the length of time it was taking to determine a cause of death.

Ms Hodgetts said her daughter underwent a medical examination for her employment and was given a clean bill of health just two weeks before she died.

A spokesperson for Somerset Senior Coroner Samantha Marsh said: “We have advised that we await a specialist neuropathology report for Ms Louden-Godfrey as her brain has been sent for specialist examination.

“These examinations and reports take time.

“The deceased’s family are aware of this.

“We have offered our condolences to the family for their loss.”

The BBC reported a post mortem on Ms Loudon-Godfrey was carried out about four weeks after her death but proved to be ‘inconclusive’, resulting in the coroner requesting a brain examination.

The Somerset Coroner’s Office currently has a large backlog of cases it is handling, some dating back several years.

A pre-inquest review will be held during March into a death which happened in 2019.

This week, 59 inquest hearings took place, 20 of them on one day alone, as the coroner dealt with some of the deaths which occurred last year in Somerset, with one case from 2023 and one from January of this year.

Coroners have to find answers to four questions: Who was the deceased? When did they die? Where did they die? How did their death come about?