MPs have backed plans designed to tackle the crippling shortage of homes in Brighton and Hove.

Measures to allow the council to impose financial penalties on landlords who leave their properties empty were approved as part of the Local Government Bill, which received its Second Reading in the Commons last night.

The city currently has hundreds of empty homes, mostly in the private sector, yet there is a waiting list of five years for some categories of council housing.

At present, landlords and homeowners are entitled to a 50 per cent council tax discount for properties which are unfurnished and classed as "long-term empty".

In future, councils will be given the option of reducing the level of the discount or ending it altogether.

Ministers hope it will remove the "perverse incentive" for landlords to leave properties empty and get them back in use in property hotspots.

The Bill, which now passes to committee stage, will also allow the city council to reduce the 50 per cent discount enjoyed by second homeowners to just ten per cent.

This is a particular problem in Brighton and Hove, which is a popular spot for wealthy Londoners to own a weekend home.

The extra income obtained by the council could be spent, for example, on social housing.

During last night's debate, Labour's Brighton Pavilion MP David Lepper said: "The right to vary the discount for empty private properties and second homes will be much welcomed in areas such as mine, with very real housing need and where several hundred private accommodation units are still empty."

At the end of last year, a dossier of evidence compiled by the city council and presented to MPs revealed a shortage of affordable homes to either buy or rent had led to "unprecedented" homelessness problems.

In 2001, for the first time, the number of homeless people was greater than the combined total of council and housing association houses which became available.

As recently as 1998, 1,200 homes were available compared to around 600 households being accepted as homeless.

But, at the end of March last year, the picture had changed completely with around 1,100 homeless acceptances competing for fewer than 900 properties.