London announces new plans to meet 2012 target despite police criticism
Indoor soup runs mooted to clear streets
Soup runs should move indoors to try to achieve the London mayor’s goal of ending rough sleeping in the capital by 2012, a mayoral advisor has said.
Richard Blakeway, director of housing at the Greater London Authority, said soup runs could be used to coax people away from the street.
Mr Blakeway said: ‘The GLA is a member of the soup forum and we support the work the forum is doing to ensure that soup runs are coordinated and don’t duplicate services and wherever possible offer their services indoors. ‘It’s the first step to getting someone rough sleeping indoors.’
The news comes after the Metropolitan Police said it would prefer to end the capital’s estimated 36 soup runs.
A quote from the police’s Westminster homeless unit in a London School of Economics report, published in July, said: ‘While they may be commendable there are issues that are brought into the areas around them … From a policing point of view it would be easier if there were no soup runs.’
Other police statements in the research, funded by the charity Crisis, said they believe soup runs encourage people to remain on the streets.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said they had no formal recommendations about soup kitchens in London. Dave Clark, trustee of homelessness charity The Simon Community, said: ‘People use soup runs because other services are not available to them. Making them building-based will put a lot of people off. It may sweep the problem inside instead of dealing with the problem.’
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Readers' comments (1)
Jim Paton | 20/12/2009 9:18 pm
Soup runs indoors? Neighbours up in arms! Doesn't happen.
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