A YOUTH hostel which recently received a grant of £6,000 for improvements for the coming season is under threat of closure as a direct result of trade lost during the foot-and-mouth crisis.

At the latest meeting of the Teesdale foot-and-mouth task group - ironically the last one as members felt the dale was over the worst - Ewan Boyd of Langdon Beck hostel said it looked pretty certain that his neighbours at Baldersdale would have to close.

This was along with 10pc of others countrywide, including Dufton in Cumbria.

"The trustees meet on March 9 and there will be some pretty stringent closures," he said. "Basically, they have got to come up with the answer to where the YHA can find the £5m it has lost."

The Baldersdale hostel, run by manager Angela Middleton, who only returned from holiday on Tuesday, and acting manager Ray Milner, was closed for the whole of last year due to the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

But the pair had been looking forward to welcoming back some of the 3,000 visitors a year they had previously enjoyed.

"I have been told the closure, if it comes, will be immediate, but I don't know how long that will be," said Mr Milner. "I think we would probably get the bulk of the season over."

Billy Neilson, agent to Derek Foster MP, who was at the task group meeting, urged members to make representations to the YHA trustees asking for a stay of execution until political representations could be made to ministers.

"There needs to be some pressure brought to bear," he said. Continued on page 3.