Hobart’s Springvale Hostel to close: Operators, parents angry at Education Department

A Hobart hostel that has provided students with a home for more than 70 years will soon close, leaving its operators and parents upset.

Kristen Hynes with husband Bob Gilmour who is the operator of the business. Springvale Hostel at New Town is set to close leaving many students who board there with few options for 2023. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

A HOSTEL which has provided students with a home in Hobart for more than 70 years will soon close, leaving its operators and former students and parents angry and upset.

Bob Gilmour and Kristen Hynes are devastated at the closure of Springvale Hostel, which has been in continuous operation since 1951 and at its peak catered for 90 students from rural and regional Tasmania.

Mr Gilmour, a psychologist who took over as supervisor six weeks after starting work at the hostel 32 years ago, said he did not know why it was closing.

“The Education Department have not given me, or anyone else, a clear, cogent reason for closure,” he said.

“The reasons that have been offered are false. The decision was made, they tried to justify it. I feel confused, and abused.”

Springvale Hostel at New Town is set to close. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed the hostel would close at the end of the year.

“The department has arrangements in place to support the current and future college students in their educational and wellbeing needs so that they can access years 11 and 12,” she said.

“The department is currently finalising the staffing arrangements to provide high-level student support, in accordance with the child-safe organisation national principles.”

Mr Gilmour said when he started at Springvale there were five hostels in Hobart, but by 2000 only Springvale was left.

He said the Education Department had helped maintain the building but had provided “zero assistance” to run it.

“By the end of 2021, Covid had so impacted the business that we were on a financial knife edge and needed at least an average year in 2022 to survive financially.”

He said with poor 2022 numbers he approached the department for assistance, but “the only assistance I got was closure”.

Mr Gilmour said the department initially wanted to close Springvale at the end of term two “putting 35 students and 13 staff on the street in the middle of the school year”.

He criticised the department’s decision to provide accommodation at TasTAFE at Warrane for 25 students saying unlike Springvale it would not provide catering or easy transport to schools, had poor staff student ratios and no seven-day boarding.

A private Facebook page has been inundated with former Springvale boarders and parents lamenting its loss.

“We needed someone there as a parent to our kids when we could not be,” a parent of two boarders said.

Originally published as Hobart’s Springvale Hostel to close: Operators, parents angry at Education Department