Unruly school pupils are terrifying elderly people, breaking windows, starting fires and vandalising trees, say neighbours.

Residents of Greenleas, Hove, which backs on to Hove Park School, said their lives were being made a misery by noisy teenagers swearing at them and jumping into their gardens to retrieve balls, damaging property in the process.

Toni Young, 78, said she was so scared that she went inside and locked her windows and doors every break-time and was considering moving house.

She said a shed at the bottom of her garden had been turned into a den by pupils and she often found used condoms inside.

She said: "Balls come in my garden all the time and they jump in to get them back.

"If they see me standing in the window they shout 'Old cow, come and get my ball'."

Pupils have cut a hole in Clifford Eydmann's fence to get into his garden and the 82-year-old said fires were sometimes started on derelict land between his property and a chicken wire fence put up by the school a few years ago in an attempt to solve the problems.

Ex-serviceman Freddie Channon, 77, who moved into Greenleas with his wife 18 months ago, said pupils regularly jumped on his garage roof and into his garden and gave him abuse.

Mr Channon, who frequently complains to the school, said: "The language they use is beyond description and we are bombarded with it day after day."

Mike Kavanagh, 57, who has lived in the close for a decade, said the problem had been going on for years and action by successive headteachers had not solved it.

Residents believe the only solution would be a high wooden fence or wall and regular strict patrols of the grounds.

Brighton and Hove City councillor, Conservative Dawn Barnett, who lives in the street, said: "I have been down to the school on a weekly basis but they say they can't afford a wall so it is up to the council.

"These residents pay their council tax and should not have to live with this."

Tim Barclay, the school's head since 2002, said: "We have taken away a basketball ring, built a new fence and banned football on the hard surface near the gardens. The problem now is that they are playing on the playing fields, part of which also backs on to the end few houses.

"A fence big enough to stop this problem would be so huge and unsightly that it would probably not even get planning permission.

"We are going to start a football exclusion zone in the entire area, which is regularly patrolled by student supervisors."

A council spokesman said: "We've discussed it with the headteacher who is in regular contact with residents. The head will deal with any trespassing.

"There is no money for a fence and any incidents will have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis."