‘Excuse me, Miss Smith but I’ve noticed that you’ve been leaving every night with Jenkins from planning.

“Once or twice I thought you were whispering something in his ear. Are you having a relationship?”

“Certainly not. I was just discussing with him, confidentially, a planning application for a new porch in Darnley Road. We thought the proposed colour of the tiles on the roof was rather intriguing.”

Staff at Medway Council must beware of getting over-familiar with a colleague under a new “Workplace Relationships” protocol approved by the authority’s Employment Matters Committee. The report presented to the committee was 22 pages long.

Now it’s official – it’s OK to strike up a relationship with a colleague in a council department, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the job.

Managers have been told they can’t discriminate against employees in a relationship, most of which do not give rise to concern, but there are “occasions where a relationship could create a conflict of interest or may give rise to awkwardness and embarrassment within the workgroup.”

The lengthy protocol lays down what is deemed as unacceptable.

“Where colleagues are involved in a close personal relationship, they should not engage in intimate behaviour during working time, for example, kissing touching, or holding hands.”