A council officer who made a strongly-worded attack against a campaigning group will not be disciplined.

Glynn Jones, chief executive of Brighton and Hove Council, said he would not take action against the officer who accused campaigners of being paranoid about the city bid.

The war of words broke out when The Campaign for a Better Brighton and Hove claimed the city council was trying to trash Hove in favour of Brighton.

In response, an unnamed council spokesman said: "It's more of the same inaccurate, hysterical resentful, paranoid, obsessive politically-motivated codswallop we've come to expect.

"It's a transparent anti-Labour campaign aimed at a Labour-run council and even people who don't like Labour must be getting very, very bored with it."

Geoffrey Theobald, opposition Tory leader, said: "This spokesman has made a political statement and has made an attack on a group of council taxpayers. Such a statement should have been made by elected councillors. It is for the Labour administration to do this and not officers."

However, Mr Jones said although the comments were somewhat over the top they were not intended to be party political.

He said the officer had in fact gone out of his way to avoid political statements.

He said: "What he was trying to say, as strongly as possible, was a leaflet headed Hove RIP with a sub heading of Does the City Bid Mean the End of Hove? is a claim this authority finds frankly ridiculous.

"What the officer went on to say was he believed most of the criticism within the leaflet was actually aimed at the Labour Party in various guises and he was trying to remove the council from this party political debate."