Major David Coates outside Davis House Picture Ref: 78688-63STAFF at a homeless hostel fear they could be made homeless themselves unless they can quickly find a new site.

Davis House, which is run by the Salvation Army, needs a complete overhaul to bring it in line with standards to help the homeless in the 21st century.

Manager Major David Coates is appealing for people in Swindon to come up with ideas for where they could move after their plans to buy Princess House in Princes Street were crushed by a higher bidder.

The hostel, in Turl Street, has received funding from the Office of The Deputy Prime Minister to enable the move.

But this cash comes with a time limit and so must be spent soon before it expires.

Maj Coates, Davis House manager, said: "We thought we had found a perfect site at Princess Street. We had plans drawn up to see what we could do with it.

"We bid about £2.1m but we have found out that we were outbid by another company whose bid was in the region of £3m.

"There was no way we could compete with that.

"It means we are back to square one again but we need a new site as soon as possible."

Ideally the charity needs to find a new home, which is in the town centre so that its residents have easy access to the facilities on offer.

"We have been at Davis House since 1981. The site is too old and it's not cost effective to re-develop," said Maj Coates.

"The main problem with Davis House is the size of the bedrooms. They are very small. They also do not have en-suite bathrooms, which ideally the new site will have so that residents have more privacy.

"The layout of the hostel is very institutionalised as well and a cluster style design would be much more beneficial so that we could group people together with specific needs."

The new site will be smaller than Davis House, which has 121 bedrooms, where people can stay from one night to two years.

There will be 20 resettlement units, ten move on flats and 50 direct access beds.

Maj Coates said: "In a nutshell a new modern building will give us the opportunity to provide a far better service.

"We really are desperate for help because we are in danger of losing the funding that we've already secured to move.

"If this happens the entire process will have to start all over again."

Anyone who owns property in or around the town centre, or if anyone knows somewhere which could be suitable is asked call Maj Coates on 01793 531107.

Lyndsay Scanlan