Homeless on trail of two cities

Two cities have defended their policy of paying homeless peoples' fares back to their home city after it was branded "outrageous" by charity Shelter.

Cambridge City Council admit they give one way train tickets to homeless people to move them back to Norwich.

And Norwich is doing exactly the same thing in the opposite direction.

However, both councils insist they only move people with links to other cities and it is usually to avoid them ending up sleeping rough on the streets.

Policy made headlines

The Cambridge policy came to light earlier this month when its council admitted sending people to Norwich if they had connections with the city and would have somewhere to stay when they arrived.

A spokesman for Norwich City Council also said it takes this step on occasions but added: "Travel warrants to Cambridge are only issued where the applicant has accommodation to go to.

"While we have a duty to investigate all homeless applicants we don't always have a duty to re-house.

"If we accept the duty to re-house and they have no local connections with Norwich then we would refer them to the authority where they do have a connection.

If we don't have any room for them it is the outreach teams work to secure accommodation in other cities. Naisha Polaine

"If someone had accommodation in Cambridge and we couldn't house them here then yes, we would give them a warrant to go to Cambridge, but not if they were going to sleep rough there."

Cambridge housing officer, Naisha Polaine, said: "If we don't have any room for them it is the outreach teams work to secure accommodation in other cities.

"What we don't want is people sleeping on the streets. The police are cracking down on begging and Anti Social Behaviour Orders have been handed out and we have been sending out a very strong message that we are full up."

Henry Meiklejohn, from Shelter, said: "It's totally unsatisfactory. It's outrageous that people should be sent between pillar and post.

"Effectively it's just councils fobbing people off and they do tend to get the run around. If it wasn't so serious, farce would be a good description."

But both councils insist people are only sent to places where they have the promise of accommodation.