The Richmond branch of the Citizens Advice Bureau is to be moved and its opening hours will be slashed to cut costs, it has emerged.

Susan Smith, chief executive of Richmond Citizens Advice Bureau Service (RCABS), confirmed the advice service would be moved from Kew Road to a “lower cost” site in Richmond and “management and support functions” would be relocated to Twickenham.

The branch is currently open for walk-in advice from 11am to 1.30pm on Monday and Tuesday and 11am to 1pm on Wednesday and Thursday. This is the same number of hours as the Twickenham branch and more than the hours at branches in Shene, Ham, Hampton and North Barnes.

Ms Smith said hours would "probably" be cut from four days to three days per week - but could not confirm exact details. Neither could she confirm the new location for the CAB.

She added: “Demand for our services is increasing - in particular on debt and employment issues - in what are very difficult times.

“Our reasons for changing our Richmond premises were primarily financial.

“Despite ongoing generous support from the council and other trusts, our operating costs are still exceeding our income.

“We plan to reduce our expenditure on premises and use any savings in future years to maintain service levels and also to invest in new initiatives to improve our services to clients.”

She added that the Ham service would be opening for an extra day per week.

“Our aim is to maintain high quality services, to reach more people where possible, but to operate in the most cost effective way possible,” she added.

Richmond Council backed the plans.

Councillor David Williams, cabinet member for communities, said: “We have given our backing to relocation plans as it seems to be a sensible decision to move from expensive premises and reduce unnecessary overheads to provide a more cost effective service and meet an increase in demand.”

He confirmed the council plans to give almost £1m in grants to RCABS over the next three years.

The news comes days after Vince Cable, MP for Twickenham, revealed the recession had hit the borough hard.

New statistics show the number of Jobseekers’ Allowance claims was up to 2,637 in July from under 1,200 a year ago, the number of empty shops has grown from 73 to 121 in the main shopping centres and housing and council tax benefit claims have more than doubled in the last year.

At a meeting of Richmond Council’s cabinet on Monday the borough’s executive is set to confirm measures to try and ease the problem, with £200,000 being set aside.

Plans include a 25 per cent increase in budgets for town centre managers, money set aside for initiatives to bring new businesses and tourists to Richmond and a “Dragons’ Den” style competition with young businesspeople encouraged to submit their ideas to a judges panel who would then award funding to the best ideas.