Rape Crisis centres across England and Wales are facing imminent closure, and the Government is being blamed for the latest in a long line of funding difficulties to hit the service.

The centres now at risk have just been informed that they will not have grants from the £1.25 million Victims Fund renewed this year, and have been given only a few weeks’ notice of the decision, which has left them little time to find alternative sources of income.

The charity, which provides intensive long-term counselling and a helpline for victims of sexual abuse and rape, says that half its 32 centres could close within 12 months unless other sources of finance can be found immediately. Six centres, including Aylesbury, Tyneside and High Wycombe, could close within weeks. Last year’s grants ran out in March and centres were notified about the 2007-08 disbursements on June 11.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), which represents thousands of charities, condemned the handling of the grants and said the Ministry of Justice had broken its own rules on funding charities. The Compact, which sets out rules on how Government departments should handle funding for the voluntary sector, makes it clear that charities should have a minimum of three months’ notice before a grant comes to an end in order to give them time to make alternative arrangements. “This case demonstrates the much wider concern that we have about the fragility of funding for small charities,” said Liz Atkins, the director of public policy at NCVO.

“These organisations are providing critical, not optional, services at the front line for the most vulnerable people in our society. It is not good enough for government departments to continue to fund them in an incoherent, ineffective and unsustainable way. Government must provide immediate emergency funding until this issue is addressed fully and provide three-year funding in the future.”

Nicole Westmarland, the chairman of Rape Crisis England and Wales, said the latest cutback is part of a trend over the past 20 years that has seen the Government siphon off more and more funds to the police and other statutory services in an attempt to raise the rape conviction rate, which is still only 5.3 per cent.

“It has been a slow decline since the mid-1980s when we had 84 centres. As awareness of sexual violence has grown, government money has gone into the statutory services to train staff in the criminal justice system and the health service,” she said. “Obviously, in an ideal world that would be the best place for people to go. But we are not there yet and, in any case, only 18 per cent of people who come to Rape Crisis have been to the police. It is still a vastly under reported crime.”

Government-funded Sexual Assault Referral Units were supposed to offer victims of crime counselling and other services. But there are limits placed on who qualifies for counselling and how much they get.

NCVO has highlighted the case of the Rape Crisis centre in High Wycombe, which is facing closure within the next week. Cristina Diamondopoulos, the director of the centre, said the nearest alternative centres are in Coventry or Hampshire. “I am desperately seeking other funders. To date the best offer is from Thames Valley Police, which have offered to fund half the Victims Fund grant of £26,750 if we can find the other third or half elsewhere,” she said.

Madeleine, a woman in her thirties from the West Country who has been helped by Rape Crisis services, said the service was “a life saver — literally. When you have suffered years of childhood abuse you are the keeper of the secret, and you carry the fear and shame around for years. I cannot describe the relief I felt when I eventually contacted Rape Crisis and arranged to meet someone. I will never forget the feelings I had when I went to the restaurant for the meeting and walked in to see a nice ordinary-looking lady sitting there and I started having that discussion,” she told The Times.

Madeleine has undergone intensive long-term counselling thanks to the centre and is bitter about the lack of services elsewhere. She was offered only six sessions with a psychologist under the NHS and although the police took her case seriously, when she tried to bring a retrospective conviction there was nothing they could offer once they had decided they could not bring a case.

“There is still a large shortfall in services from the NHS social services and the police that Rape Crisis tries to fill. They saved my life. It is as simple as that,” she said. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said the Victims Fund was never intended as a subsititute for long-term funding.

“The fact that some previously funded organisations have not been awarded a grant this year is not a reflection on those organisations. We are grateful for all the work that they have done and continue to do and are glad that the Victims Fund has helped in some way. As with previous years, the standard of applications was incredibly high and we are not in a position to be able to fund them all. As with previous years we have been clear from the onset that previous funding would not guarantee a grant award this year and each bid would be assessed on the evidence presented in the application,” she said.