Residents say community police officers brought in to fight crime on their Brighton estate are being moved to duties out of the area.

Concerned residents told the Whitehawk Crime Prevention Forum police were failing to attend to reports of crimes being committed on the estate or were arriving hours later.

They also said officers were not on the beat in Whitehawk.

Community police officers were promised for the East Brighton estate, with funding from the Government's New Deal For Communities scheme.

But despite pledges they would be installed this year, they have still not moved into an office in Whitehawk.

Residents said there had been several calls to which the police had failed to attend or took several weeks to attend.

Incidents highlighted at the meeting involved two youths causing a disturbance outside a property and a burglary in progress reported by a young man who stumbled on the raiders.

A resident said the police had not responded to the first incident and took three hours to respond to the second.

John Commons, a member of the forum, said: "I saw a police constable in town in a telephone box taking down the cards call girls put in. That's not a police job, they're private property."

Resident Eddie Cope, who sits on the New Deal board, said several forum members had visited Sunderland and Middlesborough to see how police worked in other New Deal areas.

He said: "When we went to the New Deal office in Middlesborough in big blue letters was 'police' and five of them were sat in the office. One of them was an inspector."

He said in Sunderland there were eight officers in the community office. He said: "There's no community police, we want that office manned. I heard it was going to be six to eight weeks, but that was last year."

Des Turner MP, chairman of the forum, said: "The deal was our community sergeant and our beat officers were supposed to be dedicated to our area. They were not supposed to be drawn to other areas."

Graham Maunders, project director of New Deal, said: "The bottom line is that we expected them to be in the office yesterday. I was assured they would be there shortly. I need to find out exactly what is going on and I do share your concerns."

PC Darren Grimes, who arrived at the meeting later, said: "The arrangements with regard to the police is that the six police officers for New Deal will still be taken away to serious issues and the most serious one was the Labour Party Conference."

He said he would speak to those who complained about crimes not being investigated and look into them.

Mr Turner said he would be having a meeting with the police divisional superintendent on Monday about policing on the estate.