Billericay and Wickford's citizens advice bureaux have been plunged into crisis after their Basildon rival reneged on a funding deal and demanded a bigger slice of the available cash.

Both are facing the possibility of major cutbacks after an agreement designed to ensure them a fairer share of the £138,000 Basildon Council grant was scuppered at the last minute by the management of the New Town bureau.

As a result, Basildon Council has been forced to intervene and impose an allocation based on the same formula as in past years, condemning the Billericay and Wickford bureaux to a much smaller slice of the cake.

Basildon will get £57,018, Billericay £28,498 and Wickford £32,474.

Billericay and Wickford CABs, which unlike Basildon have to pay rent on their buildings, were already having to make savings to live within their tight budgets.

Responding to the news, Billericay CAB chairman Steve Lynch said: "We are extremely disappointed.

"I felt that we had come to an agreement, but the Basildon bureau chose to take it back to the council, for whatever reason.

"Now we have got to sit down and think about the future. In the long term, this is going to cause us real problems, because this is core funding and we are going to look at other sources of this core funding.

"But we are not considering closing in the short term, I would be against that. We are just going to have to find other ways of saving money."

Diane Storey, manager of the Wickford CAB, agreed: "It wasn't until last week that I was even aware that there was a problem with the agreement we reached in May.

"But Wickford CAB are survivors and we are hoping we can survive this."

Wickford Conservative councillor Sylvia Buckley said: "It will be a disgrace if Basildon Council fails to provide adequate funding for the CAB and deprives the people of a high quality advice service.

"A far more sensible approach would be to help Basildon bureau organise its affairs to live within its budgetary constraints, as Billericay and Wickford have already done."

Defending their decision to the community and leisure committee last week, Ian Marshall, honorary treasurer of the Basildon CAB, responded: "The meeting was not called with the purpose of addressing the funding issue. Our chairman did not go to there with any mandate from the trustees or the management committee. Any decision was made without authorisation."

He also called on the council to allocate resources on the basis of the social make up of the three areas rather than on the number of enquiries each receives every year.

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