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News in Brief 153: December 2024 – January 2025

December 01 2024

News in Brief by the Pavement team


Refugee crisis

Research by Naccom, the umbrella organsiation representing numerous charities and organisations working with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, revealed in November that refugees experiencing homelessness in the UK has risen by 99% in the past year, up to 1,941. Meanwhile, the figure jumps to 4,146 when factoring in asylum seekers and other migrants, reports The London Economic. Bridget Young, the director of Naccom, said: “Our research shows that thousands of people each year are needlessly pushed into destitution as they go through the asylum and immigration system. Urgent change is needed to ensure that the system doesn’t keep driving up levels of homelessness.”


Far from home

According to the Manchester Evening News, homeless families are being relocated from London to Manchester, often with little say in the matter. MPs heard numerous such stories at the parliamentary inquiry into children living in temporary accommodation, held on 5 November. Dr Laura Neilson, CEO of the Shared Health Foundation, which supports homeless families in Greater Manchester, told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committe: “I've seen families arrive up North from all over the country. I know that, as an area, we've also sent families. We had one family who were homeless in Oldham and got sent to Hastings for some bizarre reason. The distances are huge. But we don't have a national picture because we don't collect the data.”


© Rey Trombetta
Streetwise Opera, the opera company working with homeless people across the UK, is facing a fight to survive. The company needs £120,000 to guarantee its future and has launched an emergency appeal. As Rachael Williams, chief executive of Streetwise Opera, explained: “This emergency appeal is vital to ensure that Streetwise Opera can continue to support people experiencing homelessness as they rebuild their lives. Every contribution will help to sustain our work providing life-changing opportunities that empower individuals and challenge the way society views homelessness.” streetwiseopera.org


Man with a plan

London mayor Sadiq Khan is aiming to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2030. To help achieve this his office is running a Plan of Action, asking for feedback from people in the city on how to structure the framework of reaching the project’s desired goal. Although the feedback form is open to everyone, the mayor’s office is particularly keen to hear from people with lived experience of homelessness or rough sleeping and from people working with the homeless community. The feedback form and call for evidence closes on 3 December 2024.


Law breakers

Homelessness charity Centrepoint has recorded 564 instances of English councils breaking the law by turning young people away when they ask for homeless support. The figure is for the year 2023-24 and includes cases of young people with children or were pregnant being turned away by their local authority. Under the Homelessness Reduction Act and Housing Act, it is incumbent on local authorities to provide homelessness assessments and temporary accommodation to vulnerable people. However, councils complain of a lack of funding to carry out this duty. Paul Brocklehurst, Centrepoint’s senior helpline manager, is in agreement: “The blame can’t just lie with councils,” he told the Guardian. “Decades of chronic underfunding from central government have forced many to make impossible decisions around who gets what support.”


© Koestler Trust
Awards show: The Koestler Awards 2024 edition runs from 1 November to 15 December, held at Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, London. This is the 17th annual awards show run by the trust, which features artworks created by people in the criminal justice system, such as prisons, secure hospitals, secure children’s homes and immigration removal centres, as well as those on probation, community sentences and youth offending teams. The 2024 exhibition is titled ‘No Comment’ and is co-curated by Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller and former prisoner-turned-artist John Costi. koestlerarts.org.uk


Hotel headache

Edinburgh City Council is moving hundreds of people out of unlicensed temporary accommodation, following an emergency housing committee held on 13 November. The move comes after the council was heavily criticised for breaking a law it put in place to protect people experiencing homeless. In 2024 it was revealed the council was using 700 rooms across 30 unlicensed homes of multiple occupancy to temporarily house homeless people. This went against a law requiring temporary accommodation to be licensed if it used for multiple occupancy. So, the council has moved to end its use of these homes by early December 2024, only, it hadn’t found appropriate replacement accommodation at the time the Pavement went to print in late November. STV News reported charities’ concern that the upheaval would cause stress to the people affected and that many will end up sleeping rough, due to a lack of suitable accommodation.


Footy corner

Celtic Football Club invited members of the public to sleep out overnight at Celtic Park, Glasgow, the team’s home stadium in November, managing to raise an impressive £50,000 for the Celtic FC Foundation. The foundation supports people experiencing homelessness, as well as local families facing poverty, refugees and pensioners. Glasgow Live reports more than 125 people took part in the sleep out, which saw fans brave freezing temperatures in sleeping bags and tents. Meanwhile, the Rangers FC Charity Foundation, which similarly supports vulnerable people, held its 7th annual sleep out event at the club’s Ibrox stadium. In those seven years, participants have raised a whopping £240,000 for the foundation. Rangers have gone a step further in their charitable endeavours this winter, gifting three points to whatever team is in desperate need over the festive period. The Christmas spirit is truly alive and well!


Scot free

Glasgow City Council service manager Lisa Ross has been offered an alternative to prosecution, having been arrested for hurling abuse at Homeless Project Scotland volunteers in August 2023. Founder of the charity Colin McInnes lodged an official complaint, telling the council Ross approached volunteers in an “extremely aggressive manner” and directed “derogatory slurs” and “offensive remarks” towards him and his team. Fast forward to October 2024 and Ross has avoided serious punishment. “I’ve seen people taken to court and hammered for less. I want an investigation into every inch of how that case was dealt with,” McInnes told the Daily Record.


New target

Wheatley Group, a housing, care and property-management group, is planning to build an additional 1,000 homes for council use to alleviate the homelessness crisis in Scotland. The group had already committed to providing 10,000 properties to homeless people by 2026. According to The Scotsman, more than 8,300 people experiencing homelessness have been provided accommodation by Wheatley Group since it started building the homes in 2021. About 60% of all new properties built by Wheatley Group in the country’s central belt are offered to homeless people, says a press release announcing the additional homes.

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December 2024 – January 2025 : Solidarity

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