The future of Kirklees Faith Forum is in peril due to a funding cut.

All three staff members at the multi-faith charity will lose their jobs at the end of July and many outreach projects could end, according to its chair, Bishop Tony Robinson, who has blamed a Kirklees Council funding cut.

He said that the organisation had been forced to ‘run on reserves’ since £35,000 of the £75,000 given to it by the council was ended two years ago and that a replacement Faith Grant Scheme for local faith groups that the forum helped give out was a “waste of time”.

Mr Robinson, who announced the plans on the forum’s website, said the organisation had decided to decline the remaining £40,000 for 2015, saying it was not enough to cover costs.

Mr Robinson, said: “Since the cut we have being using our reserves but we just can’t afford to continue doing all the community projects that we do in terms of training, facilitating community events and cohesion projects and mediation service on the £40,000 left.

“Our staff based at Batley Town Hall felt they needed a sense of security, which the organisation is now unable to offer, despite our attempts to find funding from other sources.”

The forum’s decision may mean that projects that have been running in the area since Mr Robinson set up the forum in 2006 could end.

This could include community discussions on controversial topics such as extremism, events to tackle racism and work undertaken with national religious leaders.

Mr Robinson said: “At the moment we hope to keep the schools’ visits, where children go to different places of worship, going as that is a very important project to us because it breaks down stereotypes and we are currently trying to work out how we can do that.

“But other activities we run will be dependent on volunteers, whose continued involvement we can’t predict– we need staff to ensure they can keep going ahead as normal.

“It’s such a great shame that this funding has been cut at a time where interfaith organisations are more important than ever due to what is going on in the world. “We have had many achievements in dealing with controversial issues and had much interest from other communities in Britain and in Europe because of this.

“If anyone has any ideas about to whom we could apply for funding to get in touch so we can keep running the forum, please get in touch.”

A spokeswoman from Kirklees Council, said: “The budget for the Faith Forum was reduced with their consultation, at the same time we introduced a Faith Grant scheme... which ran successfully for two years.

“Unfortunately we no longer have the resources to continue running the Faith grant scheme, however we know that the situation has changed since the scheme was introduced and many of the organisations who used our grant are now accessing larger ones elsewhere.

“We are confident that any work started with the support of the faith grant will continue as planned.

“The decision of KFF does not change our commitment to continuing to working with faith organisations across our diverse district.”

Mr Robinson’s email is bishop.tony@westyorkshiredales.anglican.org ,