Trader Michele Stanley wants urgent action to stop a shopping arcade becoming run-down.

Ms Stanley was left with a £500 repair bill after thieves tried to break the window of her shop, The Condom Store, in Imperial Arcade off Dyke Road, Brighton.

She said it was the latest in a series of incidents that have plagued the arcade, which had little security and desperately needed to be cleaned up.

Safety measures were needed to stop it becoming a white elephant.

The mother-of-two said: "We need gates at both ends which can be locked at night, like the ones in Regency Arcade.

"We have been on and on about getting CCTV installed. I'm fed up with the rubbish and the dossers down here. We have lost lots of trade."

Things had got worse since toy shop Gamleys had moved out of the arcade into the Churchill Square shopping centre.

She said: "They put some red covering up in the windows when Gamleys moved but that's all hanging down now and looks derelict.

"There were two bags of rubbish at one end of the arcade which have been there since last Thursday and people sleep in our doorways."

Ms Stanley, 45, said the arcade was being forgotten in favour of the privately-owned Churchill Square and traders were fighting a battle against broken windows and graffiti.

She said: "The thing is I love Brighton. I grew up here but it's dying. No one cares about the old parts."

Robert Green has run the hairdressing and body piercing shop The Green House Hair Group in the arcade for 18 years.

He said it had fallen into decline during the past five years and was considering moving.

He said: "The city council has left the arcade to more or less go to pot.

"It's a Thirties structure and it could look nice but it doesn't seem to want to know. This is the worst I have known it."

The arcade's run-down appearance was preventing it from flourishing.

He said: "It's dirty and scruffy. We're getting vandals and it's the council which is letting it go.

"If it is not interested, then perhaps it should knock it down."

He had spent days trying to get bags of rubbish collected which were littering the arcade.

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokeswoman said the arcade was jointly owned by the council and a private company.

An application was being made to the next budget, in April, for a pair of gates.

She said: "We do recognise traders have problems there."

Councils did not pay for CCTV. Traders usually paid for their own systems or the money came from other agencies, such as the Home Office.