A bitter employment tribunal defeat has left a homeless charity facing an uncertain future. Jim Entwistle visits the 700 Club’s Hope House hostel to speak to residents and staff as the threat of closure hangs over the service.

EACH room is different. Each person is different. The physical structure of Hope House hostel, in Grange Road, Darlington, reflects the ethos of its management.

Behind each door lives an individual with their own story, their own hopes for the future and their own issues to overcome before they get there, if they get there.

Carl Darvell is one such individual. I meet the 35-year-old in the doorway of his room in the hostel. He is a bundle of energy in a frenzy of activity. He’s lean and covered in tattoos.

His accent breaks between Australian and North-East as he veers between one topic and another.

“The best room in town is mine,” he says, bundling items up. He is cleaning his room, but doesn’t know where to begin. “I keep bringing stuff in, I have to remember to take stuff out,”

he adds. Like his conversation, Carl’s room is cluttered, but charismatic. Dozens of trinkets line his shelves, posters of cars, cushions, all bathed in a dim red light from a filtered lightbulb.

I ask him how he came to be here. “How long have you got?” he replies earnestly. “I fell in love with a girl from Whitby; came over from Australia.” And then he is lost to another digression, a story about a defective computer game that he just has to tell.

Drugs have played a significant role in Carl’s life. He tells me he has been using since he was a child. But he has now been clean for several months and he puts that down to the work of the 700 Club. “This is the best I’ve been in my life,” he says. “I want to be clean so I can see my kids.

“I love it here, I do. If you want to chill out by yourself, you just lock your doors. If you are sad and depressed, just go see someone next door or downstairs.”

As I leave, he finally settles on a subject, without prompting. “I can’t praise the staff enough,” he says. “I wouldn’t say it while they were here though – they would get big heads.”

The hostel is one of two operated by the 700 Club, a charity that has faced several challenges in its 15-year history, but which is now facing its biggest – a fight for survival.

Earlier this week, the charity was defeated in an employment tribunal after a judge ruled that Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations, known as Tupe, applied, and 18 staff who had worked at the Salvation Army’s Tom Raine Court homeless hostel, in Darlington, were transferred to its employment.

The estimated £250,000 that it would cost to pay off the staff exceeds the value of the entire contract that the 700 Club is operating on behalf of Darlington Borough Council. In short, the charity must raise the money or close.

The seriousness of the situation is not lost on the staff at Hope House. Manager Yvonne Beattie says: “It is a great concern for the staff.

We are concerned about our jobs because the financial impact is obviously going to be significant.”

And then there are those who rely on the service.

James Adamson, 40, spent years crashing on the sofas of friends before going to the 700 Club for help.

“They are helping me,” he says. He is nervous about speaking to me, but felt he wanted to express how much of an impact the charity had had on his life. “I want my own property,”

he continues, slowly; deliberately. “I want employment.

I want to make a secure future for myself that I can enjoy.

“I am much more positive and that is down to the 700 Club.”

HOPE House is not only a roof over these people’s heads. As well as providing a safe and stable place to live for up to a year, residents can take part in training and courses.

English and maths are taught, as well as practical skills such as cooking and housekeeping, all with the aim of giving residents a better chance of independent living when they leave the hostel. While under the care of the 700 Club, drug and alcohol intervention work is provided through the charity’s partners.

Even when the residents leave, they continue to receive support to ease their transition into their next home.

Support worker Gavin Smith says that the services on offer are improving people’s lives.

“We have stopped the circle – we are not seeing them come back through the doors, which is very different from when I first started,” he says. Illustrating his point, he goes on to tell the story of a Darlington couple who came to stay when they had nowhere else to turn. They had been living on an allotment.

“They had one Christmas in a shed, one Christmas here and one Christmas in their own home with a baby,” he says. “It was perfect.”

Such stories are not in isolation. Without Hope House, the likes of Carl and James would still be living a transient existence between the streets and friends’ floors, doing whatever necessary to survive. It is up to them if they take it, but the 700 Club gives them a chance. Now the 700 Club could use a helping hand in its moment of need.