A REPORT in The Argus said that Eastbourne councillors are to ask Brighton to stop placing "large numbers" of homeless and vulnerable people in their town.

This movement of people with special needs to that town - such as folk with alcohol, drug and mental health issues -has been going on, to my knowledge, for well over 20 years, ever since Brighton and Hove City Council was given the responsibility, by the government, of meeting the housing needs of homeless men and women, instead of leaving the decisions to people like myself and my staff who had intimate knowledge of the needs and abilities of the men living in our hostel.

When I first became a YMCA hostel manager, in 1990, our policy was to allow our residents to stay with us until such time as they felt that they no longer needed our services and were ready, and felt able, to move on to independent accommodation.

However, all this changed when new government policies were introduced that, it was said, would lead to the lives of our residents being completely turned around, to such a degree that they would be able cope quite adequately with living on their own, and would thus no longer require hostel accommodation.

This resulted in many of our residents having to move out of our hostel and move to accommodation far from the city centre where all their friends lived and, more crucially, where their support services were based, and this included some of them being sent, often against their will, to Eastbourne.

The quality of some of this was so dire that, on one occasion, I and one of my senior managers went to Eastbourne and, ignoring all the rules, brought one of our former residents straight back to our Old Steine hostel.

I was, therefore, somewhat surprised to learn from The Argus that the practice of dispatching Briton's homeless to Eastbourne is still going on after all these years, especially as it does little, if anything, to improve the lives of those involved.

Or is it all about saving money, because it is a lot cheaper to put people in grotty, unstaffed accommodation in Eastbourne than it does in professionally staffed, local hostels where their needs - medical, health, financial, dietary and so forth - can be met on a regular basis?

Eric Waters

Lancing