Noisy bikers were again roaring around a downland site just days after a trench was dug to stop them.

A Strictly No Motorcycling sign was torn down and used to make a bridge over the trench at Toad's Hole Valley in Hove.

The private site has been turned into a racing circuit with up to 30 bikers driving down with trailers and vans from all over Sussex and even London at weekends. Brighton and Hove Council served a notice on the owners to stop racing by May 1 after residents complained the noise was making their lives a misery.

The trench was dug last week but on Sunday several bikers were again zooming around the site and were moved on by the police. Richard Robinson, of King George VI Avenue, said: "It is a problem with non-stop noise every weekend. The trench obviously hasn't worked because here they are again. All it has done is create the kind of obstacles people on dirt bikes love."

Beat officers for the area, PC Mark Gorringe and PC Tracey Dixon, warned the trespassers away on Sunday and discovered a sign had been turned into a bridge. The police have been trying to find an alternative site for the bikers.

PC Gorringe said: "We are mindful of the fact there is nowhere else for them to go. But they are trespassing and the noise is horrendous for residents sitting in their gardens. If they have a proper designated site they will be supervised, but we have just seen a lad tearing along on his own and if he had come off he would have been seriously injured."

PC Dixon said it was no longer just local youths who used the track but it had become a gathering point with bikers arriving from miles away.

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