A hospice based at the Weybridge Community Hospital will be forced to move out as the charity will not be able to afford new rent charges of £300,000 a year.

The Woking and Sam Beare Hospices announced on August 12 it will be moving out of its base at the hospital from December 2016 due to “unforeseen financial pressures”, after having being based at the Church Street site rent-free for the last 10 years.

NHS Property Services, which runs the management of the hospital on behalf of the NHS, had “indicated” to the charity that from spring 2017 there will be a rental and service charge of £300,000 per year. The charity has stated this is not “financially viable”.

The hospice had planned to redevelop its Woking site, at Woking Community Hospital, to create a separate wellbeing centre, but this scheme has now been revisited.

All in-patient and day care services at the Weybridge Community Hospital will be relocated to Woking, with the community team, which includes doctors, counsellors, occupational therapists and physiotherapists, remaining in the area to provide the majority of the charity’s hospice care services to residents in their own homes.

The charity has not confirmed where the new Weybridge hub for these members of staff will be.

Chief Executive Nigel Harding said: “The simple truth is the care we deliver to the most vulnerable members of our community can only be sustained if we operate within our means.

“Our services have grown both in quantity and complexity and as a charity we have unanimously agreed that, as the NHS has not increased our core funding since 2008, our financial resources will be far better utilised meeting the needs of our patients than covering the high costs of newly implemented rental and service charges.

“Sadly we must now move out of the Sam Beare building, but the first-rate services we provide to all those in North West Surrey will continue to grow and develop well in to the future.”

Chairman Marc Riggs said: “Trustees of the charity have had to exercise their duty of prudence against a backdrop of reducing annually adjusted core funding from the NHS and against the staggering imposition of over £300,000 of additional costs on our charity by NHS Property Services.”

The new hospice in Woking is set to open in spring 2017, operating from a 20-bed in-patient unit, an administrative base for the Woking community team and the wellbeing centre.

A statement by North West Surrey Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS Property Services said: “Woking and Sam Beare hospice is a greatly loved and respected service with which NHS North West Surrey Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS Property Services have a close and positive working relationship.

“We understand that, as part of their strategic plan, the charity had broken ground on a £9 million purpose-built site to provide hospice and wellbeing services prior to any changes in the charging arrangements.

“We recently met with representatives of Sam Beare and offered our support to maintain a presence at Weybridge hospital.”