The Home Office has been incompetent beyond belief in the way it has handled the temporary housing of asylum seekers in Sussex.

Last year it denied widespread rumours that they were to be housed in the Grand Ocean Hotel in Saltdean.

Earlier this month, The Argus revealed that the plan was in fact going ahead with the Home Office blaming a "clerical error". It apologised for misleading Brighton and Hove City Council but worse has followed.

It seems that officials have given no thought about the impact asylum seekers could have on local services in Saltdean.

Now the whole process has been put on hold for weeks, possibly months, while officials try to sort out the mess.

Home Secretary David Blunkett has in his no nonsense way already apologised for a blunder at Sittingbourne in Kent, where there was no proper consultation with local people.

Mr Blunkett and his ministers owe the people of Brighton and Hove in general, and Saltdean in particular, a similar apology for the sheer idiocy of officials dealing with the hotel bid.

Their appalling set of blunders have created a climate of fear in which a small number of racists are thriving.

There may or may not be a compelling case for asylum seekers to be housed temporarily in Saltdean. We simply do not know now because the Home Office has handled this most sensitive of issues in the worst possible way.