Activists created a mock bedroom outside a town hall to highlight the rise in homelessness in the city and call for a “living rent”.

Campaigners from the Living Rent Campaign recreated a bedroom, complete with a bedside table, lamp and an activist dressed in pyjamas outside Hove Town Hall ahead of a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council's housing committee.

The group is calling on the council to demand the government address rising rent costs and do more to tackle homelessness by creating more council housing.

David Gibson, spokesman for the Living Rent Campaign, has called for action to implement rent controls, end the Right to Buy scheme and provide more funding to councils to fund the construction of “desperately needed” council homes.

He said: “Our campaign won’t falter. So many of the private renters we speak to about our petition on rent controls thank us for speaking. We won’t go away.”

Recent research by Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion Sian Berry found that almost a third of council homes in Brighton and Hove had 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.