JOBS are at risk at Dudley’s Citizens Advice Bureau due to a reduction in council funding.

Dudley Council currently gives the service around £750,000 but that will be cut over the next three years.

The service provides free, confidential and impartial advice to people in need across its four town centre bureaux,18 outreach centres and the Lye Community Project.

Chief Executive, Laura Thomas, said: "We will be receiving a reduction in funding over the next three years starting in this financial year.

"We are still in negotiations with the council but can confirm that we will not be threatened with closure as a consequence.

"We are working proactively with the council to ensure we will be able to continue to deliver services to people borough wide to those that need us the most."

She said it was unclear how many redundancies there would be but said: "We will be managing these proactively with the workforce."

Councillor Judy Foster, deputy leader of the council, said: “While we continue to work closely with organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau, these are unprecedented times with significantly reduced funding from national government, which has a knock on effect to how much money we are able to provide to external groups.

"We currently provide around £750,000 a year to CAB to fund a range of services, but we are reviewing this and working with CAB to develop more efficient ways of delivering services.

"This forms part of our work with the community and voluntary sector to reduce investment in line with the council’s planned medium term financial strategy over the next three years.”