Breaking News: ‘Cruel and uncaring’ Poole Conservatives to fine rough sleepers

Homeless people sleeping rough in Poole town centre, and beggars asking for money for food are to be banned and potentially fined by Conservative-controlled Poole Council. A draft proposal to carry out this threat, published last September, was immediately slammed by Poole Labour Party and local church groups as being cruel and uncaring, victimising those who the system had already let down. But now the proposal, called a ‘Public Spaces Protection Order’ is to come into force on 1 February, despite the protests. Poole Labour had found overwhelming anger among local residents about the targeting of homeless people in the draft order, and demanded the council get rid of the offending clauses.

Please therefore sign the petition on the Campaigns page and share it with your contacts. Under the final order, homeless people are banned from bedding down ‘in any doorway belonging to any retail, licenced or commercial premises or in any multi-storey car park between 8pm and midnight’. And people begging are ‘prohibited from sitting … in a public place with any receptacle used to contain money from the public’ as well as being banned from verbally asking for money or food. Anyone who does any of this can be convicted and fined up to £1000. The draft proposal was the subject of a public consultation, and Poole Labour Party is demanding the council now makes public the full results.

Katie Taylor, Chair of Poole Labour Party, said: ‘’ I believe Poole Labour’s campaign has stopped the Conservatives on the council from directly branding the homeless in the town centre as criminals, which is what they wanted to do in the original order, but the callousness of the clauses banning the homeless from sleeping rough remains breath-taking. “It is the Conservative-controlled council’s failure to provide sufficient affordable housing combined with their own government’s clamp-down on benefits for those in need, which are the root causes of the horrifying increase in homelessness. For the uncaring, local Conservatives to now penalise those who are victims of their party’s own policies is appalling. These people need help, not punishment. The mere suggestion of fining the homeless still turns these vulnerable people into criminals in the eyes of the public, fostering suspicion rather than sympathy and shielding the real issues of austerity."

“In light of the tragic death of the homeless man ‘Kev’ in Bournemouth recently, Poole Council should think very carefully about these measures. I urge them to remove the clauses which will allow for a ban and fines for sleeping in doorways and car parks. When exposed to the bad weather and biting cold these places might be the only shelter the homeless can reply on.”

Since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, homelessness in the UK has more than doubled according to the government’s own figures. The most up to statistics show that each night 4,751 people slept rough on Britain’s streets throughout Autumn 2017.

Poole Labour understands the final Order is to be published on Poole Council’s website, and believes it clearly must be published before it comes into force on 1 February. Poole Labour will be releasing its own housing and homeless policy soon.