Debt-ridden families will be left with 'nowhere to turn' if funding cuts to a charity are given the go-ahead, it was claimed this week.

Lytham St Annes Citizens Advice Bureau is making a last minute plea to stop a £20,000 drop in its annual council grant.

The bureau says it helped Fylde families clear £1.5 million worth of debts in 2005 and will have to turn away 76 debt cases it is currently working on.

But Fylde Council's leader says the charity has known it has been facing a budget cut for at least two years and should have acted earlier to find alternative cash or become more efficient.

"The cost saving of just over £20,000 for this bureau would devastate the service we are able to offer to local residents, leaving many of them with nowhere to turn," said CAB chairman, Beverley Harrison.

The service would have to cut two phone lines into the bureau, including a 24-hour advice line, reduce opening hours, make one part-time member of staff redundant and negotiate reduced hours or redundancy for the centre manager, she added.

"We have endeavoured to find other sources of funding to support the services we offer, however we have been unsuccessful and find ourselves in the position of relying solely on the funding of Fylde Borough Council to support our core services."

Citizens Advice Bureau supporters will be collecting signatures for a petition in St Annes Square on Saturday afternoon.

A suggested merger with the Kirkham CAB, which also faces a funding cut, would not achieve any great savings, she added.

Fylde Council will finally agree its budget for 2006/07 next Monday and has struggled to keep the rise in council tax below the Government's five per cent ceiling.

Various options have been considered by the council. Suggestions that Kirkham swimming pool could shut its doors to help meet the deficit met with a series of angry protests.

And an 'equitable taxation' scheme which would have seen more services paid for at parish level has been pushed back until next year at the earliest.

Council leader, Cllr John Coombes, said: "The CAB has known about this for almost two years. It has to modernise, like its brother and sister organisations up and down the country.

"The bottom line is that, unlike other boroughs, we have two Citizens Advice Bureaus, and we started the process two years ago of asking them to look at merging, just as Fylde Borough Council has had to reduce its staffing levels and overheads."

Both Wyre Borough and Blackpool Councils finalised their budgets for next year last week.

Blackpool Council agreed a council tax rise of 4.4 per cent - maintaining its status as the lowest taxing authority in Lancashire. A flurry of amendments to the budget, proposed by the council's Liberal Democrat group, were rejected, while Conservatives complained that the council's proposed end-of-year balances of £3.5 million would not be enough to cope with a crisis.

Wyre Council's cabinet agreed a tax increase of 4.5 per cent at a meeting on Monday - it will now go to the full council for final approval.

In both Fylde and Wyre, the county council takes around 75 per cent of council tax income to fund its services.