IT shouldn't come as a big surprise to find Brighton and Hove City Council is housing temporarily homeless people in a smart three star hotel.

Cheaper bed and breakfast accommodation normally used by the council for people waiting to be housed is full and those people can hardly be made to live on the streets.

The council says the situation is so bad it has no choice but to use the hotel to house the homeless.

The council is right, the situation is bad. Our city has an acute housing crisis and no group in society faces more hardship than those without the financial muscle to buy their way out of trouble.

The council is right to house them, even if it means using a three star hotel. But it must also do what it can to solve the crisis.

That means telling ministers, who will gather in Brighton in a few weeks time, it needs more money and shouting loud enough to make sure it gets it.

Regaining the initiative to tackle local problems is important and will give our councils back some of their self respect.

And winning back that self respect will, after all, do more to reinvigorate local government than all the half-hearted fixes the Government seems to prefer.