A nationally renowned residential home for polio victims in Worthing is to close at the end of the year.

The charity which runs the complex said the Lantern Hotel was costing too much and fewer people needed the facilities.

Andrew Kemp, chief executive of the British Polio Fellowship, said: "We have a diminishing pool of potential clients because polio is now thankfully a thing of the past in the developed world."

The hotel, in Shelley Road, is occupied by 13 mainly elderly residents, including a 95-year-old woman who has lived there for many years.

It also caters for a varying number of people who come to Worthing each year for a holiday.

Mr Kemp said the fellowship was trying to find alternative accommodation for the residents with the help of West Sussex social services.

He said trustees had made the decision to close the home very reluctantly and he accepted it would be difficult for residents who had lived there for a long time.

But the fellowship had subsidised the 53-year-old complex with £400,000 in recent years and that was "unsustainable".

Mr Kemp said: "The Lantern Hotel has been established for very many years in Worthing but the funding rules have changed and we are victims, like many charities, of the fall in the stock market.

"We have had hundreds of thousands wiped off the value of our investments, and we are here for all polio survivors in the UK. The trustees made the decision very reluctantly. It was a difficult choice, but one that was necessary.

"The home is likely to close at the end of 2003 so we have some time to sort out alternative accommodation. As soon as the decision was made we contacted the social services department and asked if we could have a senior level meeting to discuss the future.

"I went there a couple of days later and had private meetings with each resident and assured them that awful though this decision is, we want to be there for them.

"It is a sensitive issue. Ideally we wouldn't have wanted it to come to this, but the reality is the Lantern Hotel will close at the end of the year."

Mr Kemp declined to discuss staffing or redundancy issues at the home, which is registered to cater for 18 residents.

He was unable to say what would happen to the site but housing developers will be keeping a close watch as it is a prime plot near the town centre in an area with a high elderly population attracted by the close proximity of the seafront and shops.