Project to send back foreign homeless saves cash and lives

Hundreds of homeless foreigners living in Britain are being sent back to their own countries at UK taxpayers' expense in a move to cut the amount spent on their health care.

Charity Thames Reach organises the flights and will be paid £200,000 in public money to continue next year.

But it claims more than a quarter of a million pounds will be saved by cutting the number of emergency call-outs and hospital admissions involving homeless foreigners in London.

It is estimated that of the thousands of people sleeping rough on London's streets, more than a quarter are now from central and eastern Europe.

This figure has risen steadily since EU expansion in 2004 allowed people from Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic to work in the UK — and in 2007 from Romania and Bulgaria.

Mike Nicholas, from Thames Reach, said today: "This scheme is saving lives, otherwise we'd be seeing deaths on the streets of the capital. We are helping people reconnect with their families and also the services that offer them support back in their homelands.

"We also help to save UK taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds by freeing up emergency services."

Nadezda Ginevic, 52, from Lithuania, told how the charity saved her life. She came to Britain 18 months ago after spending 1,500 (£1,275) on a relocation scheme sold as a route to a good job and a new start.

Instead, she ended up picking onions on a farm for the minimum wage and when she left to come to London her luggage and passport were stolen.

After six months on the streets she stole a cooked chicken from a department store to get arrested deliberately and was sent to Holloway prison.

Ms Ginevic said: "I didn't have money or anyone to talk to. I'd have probably died on the street but thankfully the police found me," she told BBC London. "Prison was perfect. It was very warm and there was a lot of food."

Prison staff contacted Thames Reach on her behalf and she accepted an escorted flight home — the 675th person from central or eastern Europe to do so since the scheme began.

Fellow Lithuanian Vladimiras Govorovas, 57, was sent home after being seriously ill in Whipps Cross Hospital with liver disease from heavy drinking and also head wounds from an attack.

Megan Stewart, from Thames Reach, said: "He was beaten up in his squat by kids for protection money. I believe we'd have found him dead in the streets this winter if he hadn't gone home."