A CHARITY supporting the victims of Glasgow's booze culture is facing closure after council bosses hiked its rents and imposed large repair bills.

The Rooms - a key city centre base for Alcoholics Anonymous - today said it could not survive the extreme fin­ancial pressures it has been put under by City Property.

Volunteers, some reduced to tears by the news, have ­already been told their current peppercorn rent of £300 a month for their shop in St Andrew's Street off the Saltmarket is to soar.

But now they have also been presented with a repair bill for work to flats above them that is the same as their entire annual budget.

Pat Dunn, of The Rooms, said: "The rising rent would mean we would have to shut within in a year.

"But if they ask us to pay that repair bill we'll just have to shut up shop straight away.

"The people we help will just have to find their own ways. But I don't know what will happen to some of the guys who come in here. It's not that we are a home from home. Their homes are homes from home."

The Rooms hosts meetings for AA but it also provides a simple drop-in service, selling teas and coffees for 50p a mug to cover its costs.

All its staff are volunteers, mostly men and women who have won their own struggle with alcohol and want to help others.

The charity has always relied on what has historically been a generous landlord.

However, three years ago the council "sold" its commercial property portfolio to a wholly owned subsidiary, City Property, for £120m.

The city then used this cash to pay for the bill for a controversial round of redundancies.

City Property now has to raise the cash it needs to ­cover a mortgage on all the property.

Mr Dunn said: "The council is now pulling the heart out of something that has helped thousands of families, over the last 50 years.

"This is not our fault. This is the fault of the city council for deciding to raise money from its property to pay for its redundancies."

The Rooms have been asked to sign a new lease that will make them responsible for a £17,000 share of the cost of renovation being carried out by on its entire building by factors GHA.

Other businesses on the Saltmarket have already shut down when faced with such bills - with local traders saying the Saltmarket will now have beautiful buildings but no shops.

A City Property spokesman today stressed rent rises had be staggered over eight years and that repair bill included a 50% discount.

He added that the arm's-length organisation was "committed to working with the tenant to find alternative accommodation that would better suit its circumstances, if required".

Mr Dunn unsuccessfully lobbied city leader Gordon Matheson - who announced a war on booze culture in a blaze of publicity two years ago. Another Labour councillor, Yvonne Kucuk, has offered to help find alternative funding.

She said: "Nobody is getting turfed out on my watch."