Rough sleeper figure 'misleading'

By Andrew Fletcher BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast

Local councils are asked to record the number of people sleeping on their streets

Some London councils are using tactics to keep the official figure for rough sleepers misleadingly low, BBC News has learned.

The government says there are only 483 rough sleepers across England.

But homeless charities say extra efforts are made to get people off the streets just before they are counted.

Campaigners say these are often temporary measures which disguise the true scale of the problem. Councils deny they are manipulating figures.

Local councils are asked to record the number of people sleeping on their streets on one night of the year, and those are added together for a national total.

Charities Housing Justice and the Simon Community say the system is not working because although independent monitors go out on the night the count is done, there is no scrutiny of activity on the streets in the weeks running up to the count.

Target

The London coordinator for Housing Justice, Sally Leigh, says extra efforts are made to move people on.

"The government issues a target to each borough, and outreach staff and police work hard to achieve it," she said.

"In the two weeks before the count, our belief is that police change their shifts to night shifts, and those identified as homeless are woken up and engaged in long conversations and invited to leave the borough over a two-week period."

The BBC spoke to someone who has been involved with the street count in Camden who said that outreach workers were switched to night shifts in the month before the count so they could spot rough sleepers and talk to them about moving on.

Police did extra night shifts to help them, and rooms in B&Bs were paid for to get people off the streets on the night of the count.

The BBC has also seen the minutes from a meeting of outreach teams and police in Westminster.

This was held on 2 September 2008, three weeks before a count was done there.

Plans were made to carry out a dummy run for the Street Count. Police and outreach workers would do night shifts from 21 September leading up to the count.

The minutes state: "They will be adopting some tactics used from the March count to move people on."

Misleading

In some cases, this intensive outreach work can help individual rough sleepers to find shelter, but it is not always a long-term solution.

The charities think many end up back on the streets after the count.

It also gives a misleading figure for the number of people sleeping rough on a typical night.

If the official figure is misleadingly low, there is less pressure on politicians to provide the support services those people need.

Former rough sleeper Tom, who said he was moved on by police in Westminster on several nights last September, told the BBC: "If the public actually knew the true figures, it just wouldn't be acceptable in a so-called civilised country."

"I would say in London alone you've got 483, easily.

"If you take into consideration Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, the big cities - masses of homeless people in this country now.

"The government knows it, we know it - we've just got to prove it."

I can say categorically it's not council policy to manipulate or massage the figures in any way, or take any steps to artificially reduce the numbers of people sleeping on the streets before the count Councillor Philippa Roe

Some charities do their own independent counts, using the same methods.

The official count in Westminster last September found 69 rough sleepers, but Housing Justice found 206 a fortnight earlier, and the Simon Community spotted 194 on one night five weeks later.

A network of London charities called Chain dealt with 3,472 individuals who slept rough in London at some point in the past year.

The local authorities deny any wrongdoing.

Camden Council says it does not have a policy of increasing outreach activities in the run-up to a count, and says B&Bs are only used for rough sleepers in exceptional circumstances.

BBC News showed the minutes of the meeting in Westminster to the authority's cabinet member for housing, Councillor Philippa Roe, who said they surprised her greatly.

"I can say categorically it's not council policy to manipulate or massage the figures in any way, or take any steps to artificially reduce the numbers of people sleeping on the streets before the count."

She said that if specific tactics were being adopted to move people on ahead of the count, she would stop it.

The Metropolitan Police said they "do not have the power to move somebody on just because he or she chooses to sleep on street".

It says officers in the homeless unit do more night shifts than usual in July, August and September because it is their busiest time of the year.

Ministers admit the Rough Sleeper Count is a snapshot, but they will use it to measure whether they have reached their target of eradicating rough sleeping by 2012.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, different methods are used to measure rough sleeping which politicians there feel are more reliable.

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