The fictional family living on the Fields estate in J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy is the Weedon family.
The Weedons are represented chiefly by teenager Krystal Weedon and her mother Terri. Their lives connect the novel’s local political dispute to questions about poverty, addiction, social services and the unequal treatment of residents in Pagford. The Fields estate stands in contrast to the more comfortable parts of the village.
The novel’s central political event is the vacancy created by Barry Fairbrother’s death. Fairbrother had supported residents of the Fields, so the election over his council seat becomes a struggle over whether the estate should remain part of Pagford or be transferred to the neighbouring city of Yarvil.
The Weedons are sometimes confused with the Fairbrothers, Mollisons or Jawandas, other major families in the book. The family names matter because Rowling uses the competing households to show how the same community interprets poverty and responsibility differently.