The daughter of an 86-year-old woman facing eviction from her East Sussex care home has pleaded with a judge to let her stay.

She said moving her mother from the Moreton Centre in Boscobel Road, St Leonards, could kill her.

The woman and her daughter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are at the centre of a High Court battle to stop the home from closing.

The daughter said if her mother's judicial review challenge failed the effect could be disastrous.

Yesterday she told the court: "Please don't move my mother from the Moreton Centre. I feel this would kill her.

"Mum is unable to walk or stand up and she relies on the staff to help her in and out of the wheelchair. Mother is unable to get up and out and about or put herself to bed at night-time.

"She is deaf, unable to see very well and has had a number of strokes but despite this she is very cheerful.

"If mother is forced to move from her happy and secure family home it would result in extreme distress which I don't think she would recover from.

"Her emotional wellbeing depends on her close personal relationship with the staff."

The woman said her mother was 'very happy, content and well cared for' at the Moreton Centre.

The two-day judicial review is being held after families challenged the decision by East Sussex County Council to move eight elderly residents.

Members of the Tory-run council sanctioned the decision to develop the centre just before Christmas, triggering anger from relatives.

The council wants to turn the home into a 30-place rehabilitation centre to ease hospital bed blocking.

But the development has been halted by the family of one resident who has been at the home for seven years.

Her family won permission for a review after going to the High Court to say the council acted unfairly.

Rupert Skilbeck, for the pensioners, said life would be made 'difficult' for many of those who used the home on a non-residential basis if it was closed and the council had not come up with an alternative.

The case continues.