Disabled ex-servicemen at a home in Worthing are furious at Whitehall plans to split them up.

The Government has ordered nursing and rest homes to improve facilities by creating en suite rooms for residents.

But many residents at Gifford House, the Queen Alexandra Home for Disabled Ex-servicemen in Boundary Road, Worthing, prefer to share rooms with their pals.

Managers at the home, whose most famous supporter is the Queen Mother, have written to the Government asking for an exemption.

But they have been told that there can be no exceptions, which has dismayed the old soldiers, sailors and airmen, who feel they have not been consulted.

Now Gifford House must find £4 million to build a new two-storey block consisting of 20 single rooms with en suite facilities on the upper floor and a larger leisure activities and physiotherapy department on the ground floor.

It will also be converting two wards into predominantly single rooms over four years, starting in autumn next year.

Jayne Peachey, company secretary and financial controller, fears many private care homes will go out of business because they will not be able to fund new facilities.

She said some of the residents at Gifford House were tetraplegic and could use only their voices. Single rooms would mean they would not be able to chat with friends at night or alert them if a medical problem arose.

Miss Peachey said: "A lot of our people want to share a room. They are worried and anxious about the changes.

"We did try to write to ministers but they weren't interested in what individual nursing homes had to say."

Miss Peachey said the Government wanted the facilities ready by 2007 but it was not providing money towards the cost.

She said: "Grants from the Government are not on the cards. It has stated categorically that it will not be financing anything."

Nobody from the Department of Health was available for comment.