Residents are demanding action to stop children as young as seven riding motorbikes on a Brighton estate.

They want an official off-road motorcycle track where youngsters from Whitehawk and other parts of Brighton and Hove can ride legally.

The problem was highlighted at the annual general meeting of the Whitehawk Crime Prevention Forum on Wednesday.

Forum members and estate residents recognised the problem was city-wide.

People living in Whitehawk said children as young as seven were riding motorbikes on pavements, going over Race Hill and travelling down Manor Hill on the estate.

They said most of the bikes were not taxed and did not have MOT certificates. Their riders, many of them too young to ride motorcycles legally, were uninsured.

Resident Eddie Cope warned: "Someone is going to get killed up there and that's the only time action is going to be taken.

"It's not just young people up there, it's adults too and we want something done."

But another resident, Claudia Burton, told the forum local people would be unhappy if the land near their homes at the back of Wilson Avenue became a permanent track as bikers were already causing problems.

She said: "There are about 1,000 people living up there and we are not happy about the possibility of a track there. It's a race track as it is."

Another resident complained young people were riding motorbikes around the estate's network of alleyways.

She said: "I dread going out at night. Usually you can hear them but they also freewheel the bikes around so you don't always know when one is coming."

Dave Simmonds, community safety co-ordinator of Sussex Police and a former officer, said the search for a track in the Brighton area had been going on for at least 30 years.

He recalled that when there had been a motorbike track at Upper Beeding young motorcyclists had still ridden illegally across the Downs to reach it.

An off-road motorbike committee set up by the forum in February to discuss a home for a legal track will meet again at The Valley Social Centre in Whitehawk on May 2 at 1pm.

One suggestion is the need for a track should be put to the Government's New Deal for Communities scheme, which operates in the east Brighton area to improve communities.