Tenants should beware of firms offering them a few thousand pounds to sell their council homes to private companies.

They could be homeless while the company makes a fat profit and the stock of council properties in Brighton and Hove depletes.

What these companies are doing is making a mockery of the right-to-buy scheme enabling tenants to buy their homes at discount rates and enter the private sector.

This scheme was one of the success stories of the Thatcher Conservative governments of the Eighties but has caused problems in areas of housing shortage.

Many of the biggest and best council homes have been sold, creating a severe shortage for those most in need.

Until now there has at least been a benefit to former council tenants who have put their feet firmly on the property ladder.

What these companies are doing is buying properties in the names of tenants at a discount and offering incentives.

The tenants then have to leave their homes which are offered at high rents before being sold after the legal limit of three years at full market value.

Tenants should be warned they could be homeless and will be barred from having a council house again.

The companies are preying on vulnerable people so that they can make money.

What they are doing is legal but it is morally wrong.

Brighton and Hove City Council should waste no time in persuading the Government to close this loophole in the right-to-buy legislation.

Alternatively it could stop tenants buying their own homes and instead help them buy other homes in the private sector which would also maintain council stock.