The Cottage day centre is one of three local centres which it is proposed to replace a single facility.

Users of The Cottage, in Redoubt Road, say the closures of their centre, together with The Bourne and Saffrons Lodge, hits the most vulnerable people.

Anne Ranson, one of 246 people who will lose their day centre, said, "The worst fear of anybody with mental health problems is change and this is going to be enormous. We have clients that have been here for 18 years and they are just going to wipe it all out."

East Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust (PCT) is to end the contracts of all three centres and one 'resource hub' is expected to open in Eastbourne next July.

The Cottage, run by Communicate for mental health body Sussex Partnership NHS Trust, is a social centre, a residential house with a comfortable sitting room where service users can sit, talk, drink tea and eat the weekly roast dinners prepared for them by staff for £1.20 each.

The new hub will focus more on helping people into work, and provide vocational training.

Anne said, "We have been told people with mental health problems who want to go back to work will be helped to find a job. But with mental health problems you can't get a job, you live day by day.

"When I wake up tomorrow I could be happy, I could be sad, I could be suicidal and unable to get dressed let alone get up and go to work."

The service users say they are worried they do not know where the new centre will be, its size or what it will provide. After the three existing centres close and before the new centre opens, they said, they could be left with nowhere to go and no support or help.

A spokesman for the PCT said, "A provider will appointed in December 2008. This will then be followed by a six-month transition period, during which time we will ensure that the needs of any people affected will be assessed and appropriate services for them found."