A mountain of red tape is threatening the closure of homes for the elderly across Sussex, care workers have warned.

Nursing and residential homes have told The Argus they are struggling to cope, following the implementation of draconian regulations, forcing them to carry out renovations costing up to £1.5 million.

Some have indicated they would rather sell up than face an uncertain future - leaving scores of pensioners with no homes and hundreds more facing the prospect of being evicted in the next few years.

Gildredge Park House in The Goffs, Eastbourne, has become the third Sussex home in less than two weeks to announce it is to close because it cannot afford to carry out work being demanded under the Care Standards Act.

Owner Ann Redman said: "I see it all the time - homes closing. There are so many rules and regulations in being an employer for a small business, it is becoming really difficult.

"I worked in the home before I bought it. I had been there for 16 years and it is difficult looking after elderly people, keeping the families and residents happy. I feel I've had enough now."

The Edwardian Gildredge Park House has nine elderly residents and employs the same number of staff, mostly on a part-time basis.

Ms Redman told The Argus: "It's not a viable business anymore.

It's got a very good name and reputation but there is so much red tape and so many regulations over improvements to the building.

"It's not making much profit and the cost of employing staff keeps going up."

Most residents will find a new home or be re-homed by Eastbourne Borough Council. But experts have warned the the trauma of moving frail residents causes distress, depression and even death while a fall in the number of care home places is exacerbating "bed blocking", when elderly people with no nursing home places are forced to stay in hospital, causing overcrowding and cancelled operations.

Friends of wheelchair-bound Brian Knight, who died six weeks after leaving his long-term rest home, claimed the stress of moving killed him.

Mr Knight, who was in his 70s, died in Worthing Hospital in 2004 of a suspected heart attack. Friends told The Argus the closure of the St Giles rest home in Elm Grove, Lancing, where he had lived for more than 30 years, had brought on the attack.

Last week The Argus reported that Dresden House, in Medina Villas, Hove, would close on March 31, with 33 elderly residents being evicted because the charitable trust running it says it cannot keep up with new legislation.

It emerged yesterday that Norman Latham House in Old Shoreham Road, Southwick, is also to close. Care homes are blaming the Care Standards Act, implemented in 2001, which has a remit affecting everybody in care from a baby in a children's home to an adult at a private hospital.

Concerns over "national minimum standards" - relating to anything from the size of beds to the number of cooked meals per day - have prompted fears that further care homes could close rather than try to meet the new rules. No detail is spared on the explanation of the "national minimum standards". For care homes for older people staff must use "the term of address preferred by the service user" whose menu must be changed regularly and mealtimes must be "unhurried".

Sara Barington, manager of The Gables Care Home, Ifield Green, Crawley, said: "It is terrible, it is really sad and it does kill these old people when they are forced to move out."

The manager of a home in Polegate, who did not want to be named, said: "I don't feel the inspectors fulfil their brief, which is to assess care homes in attaining standards. They come in to find fault."

Some 45 pensioners are to be evicted from Norman Latham House because the Government has dictated its rooms are too small - even though residents at the home, which has been open for 45 years, are happy.

Anne Hall, whose 96-year-old mother has been a resident since 2001, is so worried about the effect the news will have on her mother that she is not planning to tell her until a new home has been found for her.

Mrs Hall, 71, of The Martletts, Shoreham, said: "She has been very frail for a while now and is more or less confined to bed so the size of her room is not an issue."

David Kinsella, chairman of West Sussex Housing Society, which runs Norman Latham House, said: "The law is directly to blame for what has happened to us. It is not a happy situation."

The home's staff are to be be made redundant.