LACK of funding will force Citizens Advice Bureau to close in Cheltenham.
It comes after it lost a key contract with the borough council to provide support and advice to the town.
A letter sent to staff and volunteers by Richard Busby, the chairman of Cheltenham, Cirencester and Tewkesbury CAB's board of trustees, said the organisation would close the branch. It means that clients looking for help would have to go to Gloucester or Stroud.
The bureau lost a contract with Cheltenham Borough Council to provide housing, benefit and financial advice in 2011 and the charity has been operating at a loss ever since.
Figures released in May revealed the number of people using the service across the three districts had risen by 60 per cent from 3,428 in 2009/10 to 5,484 in 2012/13.
The borough council has been providing the charity with interim funding worth £30,000 a year, but that cash will stop from next April.
As a result face-to-face services at the CAB's hub in St James's Square will stop while drop-in services in Tewkesbury and Cirencester will be transferred to other providers.
In the letter, Mr Busby said: "The interim funding from CBC did enable us to keep going but only by using our reserves to help to finance the operation.
"Now that interim funding is to be stopped we do not have adequate financial resources and also it would be wrong in principle to cross-subsidise operations from Tewkesbury or Cirencester.
"In consequence the Trustees decided that their only course of action was to close down the organisation and transfer our contracts with Tewkesbury and Cotswold plus other services to other local CABs such as Gloucester, Stroud or West Oxfordshire.
"Services in Cheltenham will be subject to an orderly reduction with the aim of ending face-to-face services at St James' Square."
The trustees said they regretted taking the decision.
County Community Projects (CCP) won the right to run the advice service in Cheltenham.
When CAB missed out, the borough council agreed to give £30,000 a year for two years to help the charity adjust.
It also offered CAB a council-owned retail premises rent-free but the charity felt unable to make the move without additional financial support, according to the authority.
Councillor Peter Jeffries (LD, Springbank), cabinet member for housing and safety, said: "We are disappointed that CAB has taken the decision to turn down our offer of rent-free accommodation.
"Cabinet members and officers have spent many months working with CAB to try and find solutions that would sustain their services in the town.
"The offer of rent-free premises was quite generous, considering we are now funding another organisation to provide these advice services in Cheltenham."
CCP deliver the council's advice service from Cheltenham First Stop in the High Street.
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