New crisis for rough sleepers

London is facing a rough-sleepers crisis because it has run out of hostel space.

Experts fear hundreds of homeless people will be forced on to the streets because there is nowhere for them to sleep.

A leading housing charity today warns that only a "handful" of the 3,000 hostel beds are available each night because of a bottleneck in getting people into permanent accommodat ion . I t blames a lack of interest among the 33 boroughs in helping to find homes for many of the most needy in the capital.

The charity Thames Reach Bondway says homeless people are being forced to spend up to two years in temporary accommodation.

This is twice as long as people were having to wait three years ago for a local authority home. As a result, vulnerable people are sleeping in the streets waiting for hostel beds. The Government's success in cutting rough sleeping by two-thirds is at risk of being reversed.

Jeremy Swain, chief executive of Thames Reach Bondway, said: "Hostels are bursting at the seams with people desperate to move forward with their lives but with nowhere to go."

The Government recorded 265 people sleeping on London's streets on any one night during the summer.

Thames Reach Bondway says the homeless are falling through gaps in council bureaucracy as they have no affiliation to a single borough.

The charity wants each council to contribute 10 flats to a pool of accommodation to free up hostel space. Mr Swain said: "Without local authorities seizing the initiative... the inexorable rise in street homelessness will begin again."