Patients are set to lose access to the UK's largest anxiety centre when Oxford researchers leave for a new London base, writes Victoria Owen.

The team of eight psychiatrists, based at Warneford Hospital, Headington, is leaving a specially-built centre in October.

The Oxford University team, funded by the Wellcome Trust, works with people suffering from agoraphobia, social phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder. It is transferring to the Institute of Psychiatry, at the Maudsley Hospital. Managers at the London-based centre have offered to fund their pioneering work to cure patients suffering from anxiety, who are often left housebound and suicidally depressed by their conditions.

Psychotherapist Prof Paul Salkovskis, who has worked at the unit since 1984, said not only would he and his colleagues be leaving, but no-one would fill the vacancies, despite new Government guidelines encouraging more NHS mental health treatment. He said: "People with anxiety often suffer from clinical levels of depression and a high proportion kill themselves.

"People's marriages fail and they can't work.

"People with agoraphobia often suffer panic attacks which is like the worst fear you have ever experienced trebled."

The team's Oxford offices will not be left redundant, as eating disorder research will continue at the base.

Oxfordshire Mental Health NHS Trust chief executive Julie Waldron said it would be impossible to keep the department going with NHS cash. She said: "We can't possibly take it over because we don't have the funding for research like this."