Campaigners calling for “living rent” will construct a bedroom outside a town hall to highlight the rise in homelessness in the city.

Activists for the Living Rent Campaign will recreate a bedroom, complete with bedside table, alarm clock, lamp and a sleeping activist outside Hove Town Hall today.

The protest will coincide with a meeting of the council’s housing committee, where members of the Living Rent Campaign are putting forward a deputation.

They are calling on the council to demand the government end the loss of social housing by abolishing Right to Buy, prevent homelessness caused by high rents by implementing rent controls and providing a social housing grant to provide a large programme of additional council housing at social rents.

A spokesman for the Living Rent Campaign said: “Homelessness is rising in the city. Rough sleeping counted in November was up by 27 per cent.

“There are an increasing number of households in homeless accommodation and the greatest cause is the loss of a private rented tenancy.

“Rents in Brighton and Hove are too high. We need rent controls and more social housing which, if funded by return of the money taken from council in 2012, could build 120,000 additional council homes - even saving money for the government in the long run.”

The protest will take place outside Hove Town Hall from 3pm.

It comes as Green MP for Brighton Pavilion Caroline Lucas tables a motion in Parliament calling for an end to the Right to Buy scheme.

Ms Lucas said: “Right to Buy has been an overwhelming failure. It has accelerated the rates of national housing shortages and homelessness while putting billions of pounds in the hands of private landlords.

“We must safeguard what is left of our essential housing stock by calling for the scheme’s abolition.”

Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown Lloyd Russell-Moyle has also signed the motion.

Recent research by Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion Sian Berry found that almost a third of council homes in Brighton and Hove have been lost since the introduction of Right to Buy.

More than 5,400 homes were sold off through the scheme across the city since 1979.