Rough justice?

Trudi Davies
The Politics Show South East

The ancient city of Canterbury has contemporary homeless problems

Early on in his premiership Tony Blair set out the Labour Party's commitment to anybody sleeping rough on the country's streets. But has this commitment been one that is too hard to keep?

In 1999, he said that the sight of someone "...bedding down for the night in a shop doorway was one of the most potent symbols of social exclusion in Britain", and promised to reduce the levels of rough sleeping to as close to zero as possible.

Satisfactory progress?

According to the government this target is well on the way to being met with the number of rough sleepers nationally down from around 2,500 in 1997 to just under 500 10 years later.

But just how accurate are the figures?

Counting people that sleep on the region's streets is an inexact science at best and many charities and opposition parties claim that the methods used to assess the numbers work in the government's favour.

Twice a year, charities conduct a street count for the Department of Communities and Local Government.

This involves assessors taking to the streets in their local area and literally counting the number of people they find sleeping rough.

Gill Bryant on counting duties

So far, so good, you might think, but what concerns the local charities involved is the kind of people they can count.

Prescribed count

Anyone wandering the streets on their way to bed down in a doorway is out - even if the charity doing the count knows them.

Charities are also advised not to enter premises to look for people, so multi-storey car parks, sheds or outbuildings are excluded on health and safety grounds.

To be officially counted, rough sleepers must be on the ground, in their beds and preferably, asleep.

Nine local authorities in our region conducted counts of rough sleepers earlier in 2007. The official results are listed below. Brighton and Hove 12 Dover 6 Eastbourne 6 Tunbridge Wells 3 Ashford 2 Canterbury 2 Hastings 2 Thanet 2 Shepway 1 Source DCLG

Last week the Politics Show had exclusive access to one of the counts as Gill Bryant, a charity worker from the East Kent Cyrenians, took our cameras with her on to the streets of Canterbury.

Charity frustrated

When they conducted their count in June 2007, Gill and her colleagues were only able to record two people as officially sleeping rough in the town.

Since Gill's charity alone was helping, 10 rough sleepers at the time, the low number recorded is frustrating for them and potentially disastrous for those in need of their help.

Ironically though, flawed as the system in Canterbury might be, they are at least recording some of the people living on the street. In many other areas across the country no count takes place at all.

We meet Sasha and her dog - both rough sleepers...

How is it possible, you may wonder, for the government to announce the current rough sleeper figures if no one counts the rough sleepers in vast swathes of the country?

Statistics erroneous

Grant Shapps, the Conservative MP, wondered about it so much that he felt compelled to write a report, Sleeping Roughly, or "How a black hole in the street count leads to a systematic underestimate of the number of people sleeping on the streets".

The problem for Grant and others is that none of the local authorities are compelled to produce a count, accurate or not. In the South East only eight other local authorities even go out to count officially in the same way as Canterbury.

The others follow the DCLG guidelines which require them simply to estimate the number of rough sleepers in their area.

The estimate is bracketed, between 0 and 10 or 10 to 20 for example, but once collated is always rounded down not up, so six rough sleepers in an area would be registered on the government's books as zero.

Numbers underestimated

A cynic might feel that this was a useful bit of mathematical manipulation where low numbers are required.

Mr Shapps is not alone in thinking that this leads to a dramatic underestimation of the number of people sleeping rough each night.

Homeless charities believe that a good estimate of the number of rough sleepers every year is to take a single night's total and multiply it by 10.

On this basis, this report concludes that there may be up to 13,000 people sleeping rough in England each year, considerably more than the government claim.

Government praised

Kerry lives in a Canterbury hostel

Even so, with all the faults in the calculations, most agencies agree that the government has worked hard to bring down the actual number of people sleeping on our streets, and the counts have provided a consistent year on year snapshot of those deemed to be in most need.

But, as with almost every political silver lining, there are dark clouds hovering on the horizon.

The rough sleepers may have been reduced in number but the question that charities like Gill Bryant's want answered is where have they gone?

Jeremy Swain, Chief Executive of Thames Reach said this month: "Nobody is fooled by the notion that if only 500 more hostel bed-spaces were made available the end of rough sleeping would be nigh."

The reality is that many have joined the army of "hidden homeless", a force that local charities fear is growing in number. No longer on the streets maybe but also not housed.

Homeless numbers increasing

It is hard to get a really accurate picture of the numbers of rough sleepers

They may include "sofa surfers", squatters, bed & breakfast tenants, overcrowded families and groups, all of them are vulnerable but none are showing up on the government's books.

Gill claims that her charity is seeing more homeless people with no secondary issues such as drugs, alcohol or mental health problems, the only issue facing this new group is that they are homeless as a result of the housing market.

She predicts that it is all about to get a lot worse as the shortage of housing starts to bite in our region.

Gill reports for us this week from the streets of Canterbury and introduces some of the region's homeless to tell their stories.

In the studio, the Chief Officer of her charity, Mike Barrett of the East Kent Cyrenians, joins Paul along with Iain Wright from the Department of Communities and Local Government.

Lofty ambitions

The number of loft conversions is climbing

This week the government said that applications for planning permission for minor developments, particularly from householders, are in danger of clogging up the system.

The planning White Paper published last May gave the go-ahead for bigger extensions at ground level for kitchens and conservatories without planning permission.

But at the time it also made clear that loft extensions would be restricted to within one metre of the eaves on either side of the roof, both to hide unsightly windows and maintain some privacy for neighbours.

Now in a U-turn, the government have decided to allow a gap of just 20cms to the side of the eaves and so unblock the way to many proposed loft-extensions.

Are the proposed changes to planning regulations going to lead to a free-for-all building frenzy in our neighbourhoods?

Do you think rough sleepers are in decline in your part of the region?

Are the government and local authorities doing enough to help people find homes in the South East?

Or are you concerned that the relaxation of planning regulations will change the look of your neighbourhood?

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The Politics Show for the South East, with Jon Sopel and Paul Siegert on Sunday 02 December at 12:00 GMT on BBC One.