A senior councillor will be told to change his writing style after a resident complained that a letter the politician sent to The Argus portrayed him as a "nutter".

David Smith, Brighton and Hove City Council's cabinet member for culture, will receive the instructions in the next few days although he has escaped any official punishment after being cleared of any breaches of the local authority’s code of conduct.

The complaint came from library campaigner Christopher Hawtree, of Westbourne Gardens, Hove, who claimed Coun Smith was unprofessional in mocking him in the letter published last September.

It was written in response to Mr Hawtree publicly questioning Coun Smith about why more than 200 electrical sockets had been installed in the floor of the main room of the Jubilee Library.

The letter said: "How many more letters are we going to read from Christopher Hawtree about his odd fixation with the Jubilee Library and its shelves?

"I am not a psychologist but I suspect it is always going to be hard to please a man with the time and inclination to count all the plug sockets in a large public building, as he did last March."

In his complaint Mr Hawtree said he had been trying to make a serious point.

The complaint was part of an increasingly pointed series of exchanges between Coun Smith and Mr Hawtree, who had posed dozens of questions to the politician at council meetings and in letters, mostly calling for improvements to libraries.

On one occasion his questioning prompted the councillor to say that in a different era he would have challenged him to a duel.

Coun Smith told The Argus he had intended no offence by the letter.