The Government has announced it plans to cut the cash available to a multi-million pound community organisation.

eb4u, which is half way into the ten-year regeneration of east Brighton, has been told by ministers funding for the financial year starting next month will be reduced.

The exact amount has not yet been announced but the decision casts a shadow over eb4u's work for the year ahead.

The Government promised to pump £47.2 million into east Brighton over ten years, with tranches of funding being offered on an ad-hoc basis year by year.

This year the organisation is preparing itself for a lower than expected level of funding, in line with New Deal for Communities programmes across the country, as the Government tightens spending.

Graham Maunders, the eb4u project director, said: "This proposal will not affect the overall level of funding to be received by eb4u over the ten-year life of the programme but we are naturally concerned and will be reviewing the implications in relation for the projects we are planning to fund over the course of the next year.

"We will be discussing our position with the Government Office for the South East before finalising our programme at the end of this month."

In the first few years of the programme, cash was pumped into health, education and employment projects and in the past year money has been invested in capital projects such as the building of the £2 million business centre Westergate House in Moulsecoomb, improvements to the Fairway Industrial Estate and the closure of a crime-ridden network of alleys in Whitehawk.

Work on a new building for the Crew Club youth centre in Whitehawk is due to start later this year.

Mr Maunders and eb4u staff are working to improve aspects of employment within the organisation following a staff survey by union Unison. There were 24 negative comments, 25 mixed comments and nine positive comments. Of those surveyed, 69 per cent had considered leaving eb4u.

Mr Maunders said: "A lot of the things in the survey we have already addressed."