Britain is becoming a community divided by gates, according to a new report.

The study by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors shows that the UK is rapidly moving towards an American model of housing sealed off from the rest of the community by security gates.

The trend is increasingly popular among young people with 65 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds believing gated communities are a good thing, compared to only 44 per cent of over 65-year-olds.

The concept of gated communities is most popular in the north of England - where 68 per cent felt it was a good idea.

The lowest response to this question was 45 per cent in the West Midlands.

The popularity of the idea of gated communities is strongest in the lowest and higher income brackets.

Sixty three per cent of those earning less than £10,000 a year were in favour, as were 65 per cent of those earning between £35,000 and £40,000.

The study will comes as bad news for John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, who set out in his white paper a vision of an "urban renaissance" with "balanced" and socially-mixed communities.

The report's author, Anna Minton, argued that the result of gated communities is social division at all levels of the community - not just in housing terms.

She has described how local democracy, schools and hospitals are all undermined as gated residents exclude themselves from these as well.

New Labour philosopher Anthony Giddens has described the process as "the voluntary exclusion of the elites" and the "involuntary exclusion of the excluded".

The main motivation for the trend is a fear of crime but RICS have pointed out that this has actually been falling since the 1980s.

In the United States as many as 15 per cent of homes are behind secured gates with the same number living in inner-city ghettoes.

RICS chief executive Louis Armstrong said: "RICS wants to raise the debate on social division and polarisation to a national level.

"Here, in the UK, we should be looking at the US scenario and asking ourselves if that is the way we want to go - because, for better or worse, that is the way we are heading."