A seafront trader confronted drug dealers outside his shop in frustration over what he says is a lack of police action.

Karl Collard said he took matters into his own hands after watching a drug "turf war"

escalate between rival gangs on Brighton seafront.

He said he has been pricked by a dirty needle, threatened with a knife and confronted by drug users wielding syringes but says police have failed to clear dealers away, despite his complaints.

Mr Collard runs South Coast Cleaning and the Grand Junction Bar with his brother and they are responsible for keeping the public toilets clean from the bandstand to the Volk's Railway.

He has frequently called the police to complain about dealing but says it has made no difference.

Mr Collard said one dealer threatened to stab him when he said he would call the police.

"I was fed up with finding people doing drugs in the toilets so I took the law into my own hands.

"I went up to the dealer and asked him to tell the users not to go into the toilets to shoot up after he had sold drugs to them."

Mr Collard said the dealer told him to stop telling him what to do because he needed the money to pay for his holidays.

He said: "I said I was going to call the police and he told me he was coming back to stab me.

"When I told the police what had happened they basically rapped me on the knuckles for taking him on.

"I told them it was because they were not taking me seriously but the officers told me to leave well alone."

Mr Collard believes he has had less support from police than members of the public who told him, after the police left, that they would have stepped in if the man had pulled a knife.

He said: "They are people I see on the beach every day but I don't really know them so I was really touched."

A few weeks after the knife threat, Mr Collard walked into the disabled toilets at the seafront bandstand to find six or seven people injecting.

He said: "I told them to get out and they laughed and pointed their needles at me and said 'You don't want this do you?'."

This came just a few years after Mr Collard accidentally pricked his finger on a blood-filled needle while cleaning the toilets and spent the next two years being tested for HIV and hepatitis.

The trader said he is offered drugs three or four times a day as he goes up and down the beach.

"The police should have stamped it out as soon as it started but now everyone knows they can sell drugs here."

A spokesman for Sussex Police: "We have had a number of successes throughout the summer where we have arrested several people in possession of and with the intent to supply Class A and B drugs.

"It's something we are continuing to provide additional resources for in an ongoing attempt to rid the seafront of drug dealers and users."

The spokesman said officers were assigned specifically to patrol the seafront as well as making visits with dogs as part of a policy of high-profile policing along the promenades.