A HIGH Court judge will decide today if some of the people who lost money in the collapse of Christmas savings club Farepak will share a near £1m refund in time for the festive season.

The sums involved for the several hundred savers may amount to no more than between £5 and £50, and represent only a fraction of the estimated £40m lost by Farepak customers.

Mr Justice Mann will decide the legal status of an interim fund built up over a few days in October, between the collapse of Farepak and the date administrators moved in.

The judge will decide if the money in the interim fund was held by local agents in trust for the company or for the customers, in which case it would be repaid to them immediately.

Lexa Hilliard, counsel for the administrators, said the case was urgent because it could mean hundreds of people receiving money in time for Christmas.

He said agents would be given sums ranging from £1,500 to as little as £17 to share among their customers, for whom "it will be a source of great satisfaction and great joy".

The judge must decide whether the interim fund should be repaid to a few hundred customers, or put into the general pot to be shared between all creditors.

Last night, Farepak agent Kath Morton, of Coundon, County Durham, said she hoped the judge would rule that the customers should get some money back, however little. Mrs Morton, 57, said: "I think it should go to the customers. Just to give them something would be lovely.

"I really do think they should get something back.

"If they are not getting it all, anything would be lovely."

She said that customers had been very grateful to get vouchers from the charity fund. "They were over the moon," she said. "That charity was wonderful."