Homeless families are being put up in a three-star hotel because of the housing crisis in Brighton and Hove.

City council housing bosses admit the situation is so bad they have no other way of providing accommodation.

Up to half the rooms at the Sackville Hotel in Hove are occupied by families waiting for council homes.

The seafront hotel is one of the smartest in the area and charges guests between £90 and £110 per night.

Guests staying for more than one night have to pay the full nightly rate and there is no discount for stays of a week or more.

Private guests are given better rooms at the front while those paid for by the council have rooms at the side or back.

Karly Crowe, her partner Steve Kelly and six-month-old daughter Jade have been staying at the Sackville since they became homeless in May.

The council offered them a first-floor flat in Downland Court, Portslade, but they said it was unsuitable because Karly is severely asthmatic and could not manage steep stairs with a pushchair.

The council's own temporary accommodation was full so housing officers rang around bed and breakfast hotels.

Martin Wierzbicki, the city's homelessness manager, said: "We have reached the situation where all the bed and breakfast hotels we normally use are full up.

"We have a statutory duty to provide temporary accommodation for the genuinely homeless so we have had to look at hotels like the Sackville.

"Normally, we would not want to pay more than about £30 a night but we are negotiating a rate with the Sackville.

"It is not the full rate but I do not want to reveal how much we are paying."

He said the council spent £8 million a year on providing temporary accommodation for the homeless and the amount increased each year.

The council receives more than 4,000 applications from people wanting to be classified as homeless but can only allow 1,000.

The average stay for a family in temporary accommodation is four or five months before they are found a permanent home.

Karly said up to half the rooms at the Sackville were occupied by couples with children or single parent families.

She said: "There are couples with babies only a few weeks old and families with teenage children."

However, she said she was due to be evicted from the hotel yesterday.

She said: "We were given two days' notice and the hotel has been told the council will no longer pay for us. We are homeless, we have nowhere to go.

"Steve is working but with the expense of a baby we can't afford to rent anywhere privately.

"If we refuse to leave, the hotel staff will just call the police."

Mr Wierzbicki said: "Karly turned down our offer of a flat at Downland Court and we did not think her reasons for refusing were reasonable.

"That decision is under review but in the meantime we do not have an obligation to continue paying for her to stay at the Sackville Hotel.

"We have withdrawn our offer of temporary accommodation to her."