The Government is being asked to seize the assets of convicted killer and multi-millionaire Nicholas van Hoogstraten.

The property tycoon was convicted last week at the Old Bailey of the manslaughter of fellow landlord Mohammed Raja.

Hoogstraten at one time owned about 400 houses in Brighton and Hove which were rented to tenants.

He is believed to still own about 60 and a number of hotels.

Green councillors in Brighton and Hove say his property should be handed over to housing associations or groups of tenants and leaseholders in the same way the assets of convicted drugs barons are confiscated by courts.

His cash assets could be used to bring the properties up to the Government's Decent Homes Standard.

Green housing spokesman Bill Randall said: "For the best part of 40 years he has harassed his tenants and those who have opposed him.

"Now he has been convicted of the manslaughter of another slum landlord whose death he organised.

"His crimes match the worst of those committed by drug dealers. He should be treated in the same way."

Mr Randall said the hotels could be converted into flats and used as housing for teachers, nurses and other key workers.

He said: "Successive governments must accept the blame for allowing Hoogstraten and other landlords to put at risk the lives of thousands of men, women and children, many of them vulnerable, in his squalid and dangerous bedsits.

"They have done very little to control the private rented sector while paying out an estimated £8 billion during the past decade in housing benefit.

"Landlords like Hoogstraten have been direct beneficiaries of this hand-out."

Greens are also supporting calls for a new inquiry into the deaths of five people in a fire in a flat owned by Hoogstraten in Palmeira Avenue in 1992.