Staff at Brighton and Hove City Council should perhaps take a little more time to talk to each other.

If they did, perhaps they might not end up embroiled in an embarrassing position as they have found themselves in over St Catherine Lodge Hotel in Hove.

Housing bosses agreed to move 51 homeless families into the building.

It seems it never crossed their minds to contact their colleagues about whether they were allowed to do so.

In fact planners only realised rules had been broken when The Argus phoned and told them what had happened.

There is a massive housing crisis in Brighton and Hove. Last year the council was faced with the task of finding accommodation for more than 1,000 families who were registered homeless.

Every room counts and if the new owners of the hotel are willing for their property to be turned into a hostel to ease the crisis, even temporarily, than it is an opportunity the council must investigate.

But the pressures of finding housing must not override their other responsibilities.

Residents living near the hotel were not consulted over the plans and neither was the planning department.

The mistake could now lead to the embarrassment of the council taking enforcement action against itself and more uncertainty for families.

For a council to be truly effective, staff from all departments need to pull together.

Working in isolation and quick-fix solutions do not work. As this proves, it can lead to a lot of embarrassment, back-tracking and more graft.