THE future of a counselling service which has been operating in East Lancashire for 17 years has been thrown into doubt, after a charity said its funding has been axed by the NHS.

Maundy Relief, based in Accrington, said funding of about £40,000 has been withdrawn by East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), as bosses look to redesign counselling services.

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Lucy Hardwick, the manager of Maundy Relief, said the CCG no longer wanted to pay individual organisations to provide the services, and is instead looking for a ‘consortium’ to run the contract.

She fears the move is more about ‘box ticking’ and meeting waiting targets than ensuring good care, and called for the CCG to rethink its decision.

A spokesman for the CCG said it was a complex piece of commissioning, and not as straightforward as funding being withdrawn, but was unable to provide a full response in time for the Lancashire Telegraph’s deadline yesterday.

Mrs Hardwick said: “At this time when mental health is being given a greater focus and more people are being encouraged to seek help to improve their mental well being, it is a great sadness that such a wonderful and well-run service for local people is not being supported by our NHS.

“We desperately want to continue the service but it seems very unjust that we now have to raise donations from our loyal supporters in the local community in order to fund a service that is used by NHS GPs and other health professionals.

“We would like the clinical commissioning group to rethink this decision and to show their support for vulnerable and mentally unwell people in East Lancashire.”

The charity was started by Dorothy McGregor, Len Singleton and Alan Freeman and relies on volunteer counsellors to provide the service.