A family from Kosovo have left the town they have lived in for seven years to evade deportation.

Fred Gurraj and Dorina Lunaj have abandoned their friends in St Leonards for a new life in the North.

The couple and their ten-month-old baby have been threatened with deportation by the Home Office after their asylum application failed.

Mr Gurraj, 33, and Mrs Lunaj, 24, came to the UK in 1999 and were married later that year.

Since then Mr Gurraj has been working in construction and catering while Mrs Lunaj was a care worker. Their son Kevin was born at the Conquest Hospital, Hastings.

Friend Brett McClean, of Seaside Road, maintains the family should not be sent back to Kosovo, part of the former Yugoslavia, because they have lived in the UK for so long, paying tax.

Mr McClean said: "We find it unbelievable that the Government can issue this family with deportation papers after living here for seven years and paying into the system for seven years, costing the state nothing."

He said friends and former employers believed the decision to remove the family was, "unfair, unjust and quite frankly inhumane.

"Many residents, including myself, have helped this family because they care about them and do not agree with the way this Government has treated them, taking their money and then throwing them out.

"Fred, Dorina and Kevin will now have to spend their time in the UK continually looking over their shoulder."