When am I going to be able to read a front page story telling me 1,500 care-home places areto be built by developers in fully-landscaped settings with shops on site?

Instead have yet another front page story of an imminent care home closure (The Argus, September 7), putting extremely elderly people at risk of dying from upheaval, disorientation and shock as they deal with being moved along, shuffled off, out of the way, to yet another destination (often for the umpteenth time, following other closures).

In the same edition, we read about another developer looking to cram 1,500 flats onto the seafront - yet again, at the marina. Oh, yes, they will include disabled access flats, "key worker" flats and the propaganda will flow like a silky smoothie.

But while all this goes on, rest homes close, one by one. They make excuses about new regulations and unviable profitability but the boom in the property market is very hard to resist and inevitably some of these closures must be about profiteering.

Brighton and Hove City Council demands developers provide 40 per cent so-called "affordable housing" and the disability lobby has been efficient in making sure wheelchair- accessible flats are built but where is the matching demand for permanent, sheltered and highdependency care components in these mega-developments?

Surely they could have some of that 40 per cent or at least the odd dozen spaces here and there. Few of us are lucky enough to have an independent old age with robust health to the end.

Most descend into ever greater levels of dependency and helplessness on the way to the exit. Where will we live then?

  • Valerie Paynter, saveHOVE, POBox 521, Hove