Sitting here in a property that has quadrupled in value since I bought it 15 years ago, one might expect I would be reasonably happy with my lot. However, I am worried. Not for myself but for my children.

With house prices spiralling ridiculously upwards, are my children going to be able to afford to live in the place in which they were born and grew up?

Take a walk around Brighton and Hove and you will hear just about every British dialect there is to hear and more than a few not British. Fine.

The city is and always has been a cosmopolitan and reasonably tolerant place to live. If you are going to live anywhere in Britain, Brighton and Hove has to be as good a place as any.

However, it seems more and more locals are being forced to move elsewhere because of high rents and house prices. This is already leading to a loss of local identity and community spirit, a gradual break-down of law and order and a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots.

I don't think many would argue with me when I say Brighton and Hove is a far more violent place then it was 20 years ago.

Another reason I fear for my children growing up here - without wanting to sound Orwellian or overly cynical - is that I envisage, in the not too distant future, the more wealthy areas of our city will be surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire and monitored by CCTV and security guards. Now I know why I'm not sitting here as comfortably as I ought to be.

-Paul Hubbard, Saltdean