Charity targets bendy bus rough sleepers

The six-month project, which began before Christmas, has initially concentrated on three night buses - the 25, 149 and 453 - but is now being extended to other routes. Since it began Thames Reach outreach workers with the help of Transport for London employees, the ambulance service and police have identified 44 people sleeping on bendy buses.

The London Delivery Board – the mayor’s agency set up last year to hit the 2012 target to end rough sleeping – decided to tackle the problem of rough sleeping on buses, and the Communities and Local Government department and Transport for London have given £53,000 to fund the Thames Reach project.

A spokesperson for Thames Reach said the problem had emerged because homeless people can get on the bendy buses without having to pass the driver. ‘We are tackling this now because it’s a new phenomenon in terms of bendy buses. They were not around before,’ he said. ‘Some homeless people refer to them as the free buses.’

Of the 44 people found sleeping on buses, 42 were men and two were women. Forty-one per cent were eastern European.

Sixteen of the 44 have been helped into accommodation, one into drug rehabilitation and one person has been returned to their home.

The Thames Reach spokesperson said: ‘Some people want to keep out of the way and keep warm. Some don’t have the same support needs of other people on the streets of London.’

He explained some of the people on the buses had alcohol and mental health problems, but there were not so many with drugs problems. ‘The main thing is they [drug users] don’t want to move away from where they are begging and where their dealers are,’ he said.

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