My husband and and I walked on the pavement between Trafalgar Street and Cheapside opposite the beautiful St Peter's Church.

What an awful, threatening scenario: drunks, boarded-up shops, a side entrance with a well-used double mattress lying on the ground, rubbish, litter and excrement.

This once-thriving part of Brighton is now developing into a derelict inner-city area where the shops lock their doors during the day.

Tourists and holiday makers no longer enter Brighton along the London Road and so Brighton and Hove Council seems to ignore it. It must not scorn the many people who still live, work and have businesses in the area.

It is the council's duty to consider the well-being of the council tax payers as well as the tourists and drop-outs.

-Mrs P L Bolingbroke, Larkhill, Hove, East Sussex