He is white, in his mid-twenties, comes from London and wants your money to feed his heroin habit.

With its relative prosperity, laid-back atmosphere and self-styled Place To Be motif, Brighton has successfully sold itself as one of the most attractive places to live in the South-East.

However, the Place to Be campaign has never been class conscious and, along with the exodus of wealthy Londoners heading to the coast, a stream of beggars from the capital has chosen to make Brighton and Hove their home.

The towns' reputation for tolerance has provided a haven for the genuinely needy who may be fleeing abusive families or simply want to make a fresh start.

A range of support services has worked hard to help the most vulnerable in society but all too often their work has been undermined.

Brighton and Hove have become a soft touch for people who are only interested in conning people into giving them money so they can feed their heroin habits.

Begging has long been a problem in British inner cities but did not arrive on our streets until the Eighties.

Lord Bassam, former leader of Brighton and Hove Council, who worked with the homeless during the Seventies and was himself homeless about 30 years ago, believes it was the collapse of the manufacturing industries under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher which caused the problem.

Councils and charities have been left to pick up the pieces.

There were no reliable figures for the number of people sleeping on the streets until the Government began carrying out head counts in 1998 but the statistics are contentious.

The Rough Sleepers Unit, launched in 1996, claimed in August there were 26 people on the streets compared to 43 in 1999 and 44 the year before. It placed Brighton and Hove third in a league table of homelessness figures, behind Westminster and Oxford.

Brighton and Hove Council, which acknowledges the figures are probably higher, has also been put under strain with a surge in the number of housing applications in the past three years. In 1997/98 these numbered 2,419 but by 1999/2000 they stood at 3,461.

A recent report to the authority found more than 40 per cent of rough sleepers were taking heroin which had overtaken alcohol as the street drug of choice. It also found half of Brighton and Hove's street sleepers had moved from London or other areas and half of this figure were likely to stay.

The reason the Government is so confident it can end the problem of people sleeping rough, and presumably begging, is that previous attempts have been aimed at parents with children and not single people.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is confident a new approach of "joined-up thinking" will succeed if the efforts of the police, council departments and charities are co-ordinated. A total of £1.8 million was pledged to the unit last year with a further £437,000 added in August.

Helen Keats, head of Brighton's Rough Sleepers Unit, will be working in the town for the next four months to try and eliminate the problem completely after a successful strategy in Portsmouth.

She believes beggars are attracted to the town because of its high quality of life. She said: "Brighton has a laid-back feel about it, there is a good street culture and it feels different to other towns.

"It is completely different to Portsmouth, which is a much poorer area where you get hardly any beggars."

In addition to the cross-agency approach, Ms Keats has produced an action plan which will be unveiled later this year and is expected to contain a step-by-step way forward.

Father Alan Sharpe, who runs St Patrick's Trust, which has a night shelter and hostel, has worked with the homeless and beggars since the mid-Eighties.

The hostel, in Cambridge Road, Hove, has 29 beds for the homeless and is one of several shelters in the towns.

Father Alan said the typical beggar was a white male, aged 25 to 35, with a drug or alcohol problem, using money collected on the streets to feed an addiction and may or not come from the area. This compares with the beggars of 1984, when he first started working in the towns, who were all much older.

He said: "Rough sleepers used to be all old men but the average age has now dropped. Now they are much younger and perhaps an underclass is developing.

"The country's industrial base, which used to employ a large number of unskilled workers, has closed down and we have seen the breakdown of family life.

"People are horrified when they come to Brighton and see people have been forced to beg. Quite a number of people I see will beg if they are forced into it by a drug habit which is so expensive to maintain."

Father Alan also believes the successful branding of Brighton and Hove has led to its current problems: "Brighton is often featured on the news and in films and it's very much in people's minds as the Place to Be. Just as people in the middle classes want to live here, so do people who are not so well off.

"It may be that down here we are not quite so harsh with people as in London where they clear people off the streets.

"We are told it is a very prosperous part of the world and everyone wants to be down here.

"We have problems with people coming in from outside the area and there is a small percentage of people who don't want to work. But the majority do want to work.

"Aggressive begging has gone down because the police have changed their attitude and are more caring and aware of the problems and don't just arrest and bang people up like they used to."

Lord Bassam, who is now a junior Home Office minister, said: "I understand what homelessness is about. Most beggars aren't necessarily homeless but have a drug and alcohol abuse problem and need help through the local authority or a charity to get off drugs and alcohol."

Glynn Jones, chief executive of Brighton and Hove Council, said: "The council has spearheaded meetings with all the agencies involved to find a unified way to deal with the complex problem of street begging, drug abuse and homelessness.

"Research conducted by the police has shown their are links between the three issues. Any programme to deal with the issue has to be well thought out and structured so the problems are permanently solved and not just transferred to another location.

"This is what combined forces of the council, the police, the probation service, the health service and all the voluntary agencies are trying to achieve.

"There are people who are genuinely homeless and in need.

"People who want to give can best help by ensuring their money is used for the right purpose - food and shelter - and not to support a drug habit."