A charity is pledging to fight to eradicate street homelessness in Brighton and Hove in five years with a new report published today.

Brighton Housing Trust has published a report outlining the impact of homelessness on the city.

The charity’s chief executive Andy Winter said nobody should be sleeping on the streets of a wealthy city such as Brighton and Hove and that his stated ambition to end it would not be easy but was possible.

Mr Winter said that achieving the goal would require “massive collective ambition and effort” along with fearless leadership, determination and a realignment of focus of services.

The former Labour councillor said he had been encouraged by the focus the new council administration is giving to homelessness with a councillor dedicated to the issue.

The BHT report sets out the hardships of life on the streets where the average life expectancy is 43 for women and 47 for men.

The report states long-term rough sleepers are 35 times more likely to kill themselves and four times more likely to die from unnatural causes.

The document also indicates that the official city council homeless figure “falls well short” of the true number of people sleeping rough.

The council found 41 homeless people. But a count carried out in March by homelessness charities revealed there were 132 men and women sleeping rough in the city – more than three times as many as the council count.

The charity reports that people have been found sleeping in cars, under upturned boats on the beach, underneath the pier and even in wheelie bins and refuse containers across the city.

Almost 600 men and women rough sleepers came to the charity’s First Base in 2014/15 with the centre’s staff able to move 315 people off the streets and into secure accommodation in 12 months.

Mr Winter said: “It is to our collective shame that in recent years the number of men and women who are street homeless in the city has increased. It is our ambition that by 2020, we will have reached the point where nobody has to be street homeless in Brighton and Hove.

“Will this be easy? Absolutely not. Is that possible? We believe so.”

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokeswoman said: “Homelessness is a complex problem and there are many reasons why people find themselves in temporary accommodation or sleeping rough on the streets, but we prevent hundreds of cases of homelessness each year.

"We would be pleased if homelessness was ended by 2020 and would support any reasonable initiative that might achieve this by that date or before.”