A homeless hostel is to be closed for good.

Brighton and Hove City Council has refused to extend a licence at St Catherine's Lodge, Kingsway, for another five years.

Instead the council's planning sub-committee yesterday voted to grant a permit for the hostel for just six months. In that time, the council intends to move the dozens of people it has placed there to other accommodation.

It says most will be able to be placed within Brighton and Hove, probably in privately-rented properties.

Sussex Police had expressed concern about extending the licence for a long time, saying they have had 222 calls to the hostel since 2004 and the number of incidents each year has been increasing.

Meanwhile people who have lived in the former hotel, which has 51 rooms with basic self catering facilities, have complained about problems including damp, dirty mattresses and kitchens, people using drugs, anti-social behaviour and over-crowding, with families of up to four people placed in a single room for months on end.

Former resident Tina Tidy spoke at the planning meeting, describing her nightmare stay at the hostel after she and her son became homeless when their landlord sold up. She said she used to collect cockroaches and fleas to take to the council to prove that St Catherine's had problems.

She said: "I beg all of you to close St Catherine's so no other family has to go through the same thing. All night long people were banging on other people's doors saying, have you got any methodone, any glue?

"We were petrified. I had to move my son to stay at my ex mother-in-law's.

It was far too frightening for a 13-year-old. It was an absolute hell-hole."

Jan Young, ward councillor for central Hove, has for years called for the hostel to shut. She said: "It is no good placing vulnerable families alongside disturbed customers."

Jeremy Clark-Lowes of JCL Planning, the agent acting for the owner Top Class Investments, said CCTV had been installed on every floor and there was a full time maintenance worker. He said: "Every suggestion made by the police or the council has been immediately implemented."

He said councillors were showing a "lack of sympathy for the homeless", and it was impossible to eliminate disorder among a vulnerable client group.

Moving them out of St Catherine's would just shift the problem elsewhere and rehousing them will be a "terrific problem to surmount".

The existing planning permission for the hostel ran out in February.

Councillor Sue Paskins said Top Class Investments had repeatedly failed to resolve its problems. She said: "This isn't the second chance, it is about the fifth chance. We shouldn't be housing people in this situation."

Coun Linda Hyde said: "There are obviously major problems here. It is totally unsuitable for families."

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