Brighton and Hove is a graveyard - and a birthing unit - for new businesses, figures have revealed.

Nearly 1,300 city firms went under in one year according to the latest numbers from the Office of National Statistics.

The figures place Brighton and Hove among the bottom ten cities in the country for so-called business “deaths”.

Some business leaders said the high failure rate was due to the city’s “fluid” economy while others blamed a lack of support available for struggling firms.

Julia Chanteray, president of the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce, suggested there was an “antimoney culture” which meant some firms struggled to get off the ground.

She said: “First off, I don’t see this happening in Brighton any more than anywhere else – and I certainly don’t believe that people are somehow less capable here.

“If a business closes down, that might be that someone has sold their company on for £1million. People need to have a look behind the numbers and think about the true vibrancy and resilience of our city’s business.

“But we do perhaps have more of an issue where businesses do okay but never reach the next level. I’d certainly like to see firms here making more money and taking on more staff.

“It’s partly due to an anti-money culture in Brighton which you don’t get in other parts of the country. People here are quite happy to work to live rather than live to work.”

The figures show there were 1,280 business deaths in Brighton and Hove in 2011, the latest year for which numbers are available.

Tony Mernagh, chief executive of the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, said the high business failure rate in Brighton and Hove was “inevitable”.

He said: “We are in the top three for business births so of course that means you will have a higher number of new firms struggling. We have also got an incredibly high number of selfemployed people.

“But I think it has to be said that there is much less publically funded business support available.

“Also I think we have got an interesting attitude to business failure.

“In the US, if you don’t fail a few times in business then you haven’t done things properly, but here there’s a stigma attached to it here.

“The important thing is to be able to learn and move on.”