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Westminster drops plan to ban soup runs


Homeless charities are welcoming the news that Westminster Council is dropping its proposal to introduce a new by law making it a criminal offence to feed homeless people on the street.

In a statement, Housing Justice said today: As Housing Justice convenes and organises the Soup Run Forum for groups involved in reaching out with food and help to those on the streets we, along with all involved in this work, were firmly opposed to this by law. It represented an attack upon common sense and common decency, and would not have solved the growing crisis of homelessness on our streets

If the by law as originally proposed had been introduced it would also have made it a criminal offence for people to sleep on the street or deposit bedding across a large area of central London. This part of the by law was dropped following almost universally critical responses to the public consultation in March.

While Westminster Council has dropped the proposed by law the council continues to assert that there is no need for people to access food on the streets of Central London. The London Soup Run Forum hopes that Westminster Council will help to find more indoor venues for soup run groups who are currently forced to provide food outside due to a lack of available venues in Central London. Provision of services is much needed at this time as the numbers of rough sleepers are rising.

According to CHAIN statistics published by Broadway 1,043 people slept rough in Westminster between July and September 2011, of whom 470 were new to the streets. This was a 10% increase on the figures recorded for the previous quarter. (Broadway Street to Home report: http://bit.ly/sZGqN9)

However Housing Justice and its members are committed to working together with Westminster and all local authorities, homelessness agencies and churches to help develop more indoor venues and to create a better and more effective safety net.

Our hope is to see more services open in the evenings and weekends, in all parts of London, to meet the needs of the growing numbers of street homeless people.

An SVP volunteer in London said: "We are all so relieved to hear this news. At the present time there is an increasing number of people living on the streets and dependent on the soups runs. If this winter is anything like the last couple we've had, it is soon going to be getting very cold out there. It would be inhuman to make it illegal to give food to homeless people on the streets."

Source: Housing Justice/ICN

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