Brighton and Hove City Council faces many difficult problems.

They include keeping the streets clean, refuse collection and how to reduce a budget deficit which could reach £5 million by the end of the financial year.

There is one problem far bigger than all the rest. This is finding homes for the thousands of people either living in appalling housing or on the streets.

There has been a housing problem in the city for years caused by a lack of land. Brighton and Hove cannot expand because it is fixed between the Downs and the sea.

But, as house prices have soared, the difficulty has become a crisis.

Nothing can be done to stop the inexorable growth in house prices which, in turn, is leading to higher rents and a shortage of flats as landlords sell them.

The council, in line with housing associations, employers and voluntary organisations, has taken a series of imaginative steps including providing new homes in other districts, shared ownership and the encouragement of cooperatives.

But there is some help that can be provided only by the Government and that's why councillors have been lobbying everyone from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to Housing Minister Nick Raynsford. They include insisting on a high level of affordable housing in all medium or large private schemes, increasing housing benefit levels and contributing towards the huge bills for putting people into temporary housing.

Affordable, acceptable housing is a basic right denied to thousands in the city.