DOZENS of charities, community groups and social enterprises will be made homeless today after being forced to leave their office space by a banking giant.

Barclays had given the groups free space at its former branch in Little Clarendon Street, organised in partnership with national charity 3Space.

But almost 50 good causes are to be left without a home after Barclays decided the set-up, a pilot scheme, was “not sustainable” and gave them just over a fortnight to move out.

Almost all of the organisation based at the space, called The Hatch, said they were shocked by the short notice and did not know where they would go next.

Project manager for Community Action Groups Oxfordshire Simon Kenton said the worst part was that a thriving community would be split up.

He said: “We’re all incredibly disappointed. The beauty of The Hatch was that there were all these social enterprises like Made With Joy, Good Food Oxford and Cultivate in one place.

“That’s been so good, giving volunteer groups from the whole of Oxfordshire space to use, and this will reduce our ability to work collectively, work face-to-face and have people drop in to visit.

“This space was heaven-sent, and now everyone is running around trying to find somewhere else to stay by the end of the week.”

Mr Kenton’s group has been in the building, which used to be a branch of the bank, since it became The Hatch a year ago.

Chesta Tiwari, co-ordinator of Abundance Oxford and organiser of the Oxford Food Surplus Cafe, said it would be almost impossible to find a comparable space in the city.

The building offered space for 40 people to work at a time, meeting rooms and a basement “maker space” with a 3D printer, sewing machine and tools which any tenant could use.

When asked about leaving the organisations with nowhere with such short notice, Barclays spokeswoman Julia Husband said: “We ran the pilot scheme to enable us to explore the viability of initiatives such as this, which has now come to completion.

“In its current format, the pilot in Oxford is not sustainable. However, we are continuing to explore how we can utilise space for early stage scale-up companies to co-locate, collaborate with peers and get expert advice.”

Farming co-operative Cultivate, which has used The Hatch for meetings, said it did not realise the scheme was a pilot.

Business development manager Clare Ridley said: “If we had known we had to justify its continuance I could have helped build a case for how fantastic this space was.”

Head of operations at 3Space, Harry Owen-Jones, said his charity would have liked to carry on running the project but the decision was “out of their hands”.

He said: “It has been great, we’ve really enjoyed working in Oxford, but unfortunately that time has come to an end.

He said Barclays, which rents the premises from Oxford University, contacted 3Space after deciding to close its branch there in November 2014. The bank, which was contractually bound to continue paying rent on the building, paid the charity to make use of the premises, Mr Owen-Jones said.