NORTH Ayrshire’s last Citizen’s Advice office will close at the end of the month - despite having the same amount of funding as last year from the local council.

Last week, the Herald exclusively revealed that the North Ayrshire Citizen’s Advice Service was to seize their faceto-face operations with the closure of the Saltcoats Office.

This followed the closure of branches throughout the area in recent years but figures released this week show that funding stayed almost exactly the same for 2016/17 and 2017/18.

North Ayrshire Council confirmed that the funding for the last three years was: 15/16 - £361,211, 16/17 - £169,992, 17/18 - £170,136.

The Herald understands that NACAS managed to stay open in the last financial year due to redundancies and using reserves but they would be unable to continue for another year, with around £400,000 required to break even.

It is also understood that NACAS did not tender for the contract this year with North Ayrshire Council, the results of which are due to be published this week, and then announced that the service would be closing.

The council did confirm that the funding that was allocated for NACAS would be kept for advice services across North Ayrshire.

A spokesperson for North Ayrshire Council, said: “We are committed to ensuring the people of North Ayrshire will continue to benefit from high quality, sustainable advices services following the closure of North Ayrshire Citizens Advices Service (NACAS).

“We can confirm that the funding previously allocated to NACAS will be used to ensure that this is the case.”

The Herald contacted NACAS who said that they had no further comment to make following their statement last week.