Team to help homeless people sleeping rough on London transport

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced the creation of a new team dedicated to helping the rising number of homeless people who use Night Buses and Tubes as a place to sleep. The team will help find accommodation, provide access to support services, or reconnect people with family and friends to prevent them from ending up sleeping on the streets. 

The team will initially receive £300,000 funding for 18 months from the mayor’s million-pound Rough Sleeping Innovation Fund. This forms part of £9m that has committed to spending each year on rough sleeping services is in addition to £50m to be invested in accommodation to help people to move on from hostels and refuges. 

Transport for London data has revealed that the number of homeless people sleeping on Night Buses in winter 2015/2016 was 121% greater than the same period in 2012/13. This reflects a trend of rising homelessness seen more widely across the capital in recent years. Latest statistics show the rise in rough sleeping has halted for the first time since 2009 – with 8,108 people seen on the streets last year, virtually unchanged from 8,096 the year before.

City Hall warned that improved services may mean the number of rough sleepers rises in the short-term as more people engage with new offers of support, whilst following the recent expansion of the Night Tube, a pilot of eight night-time outreach shifts found 164 homeless people on the Night Tube and Buses.

The mayor said wants to prevent people using transport as a bed for the night and ensure they receive immediate help to access the accommodation and range of services they need.

Alongside the night outreach team, the Rough Sleeping Innovation Fund will support projects including: 

• a web-based tool to cross-check key details from the Missing People database with those on the mayor’s CHAIN database of rough sleepers in London
• two projects helping female rough sleepers access services – one by the charity Groundswell to help improve female rough sleepers’ physical and mental health, and the other by Thames Reach to help with domestic violence and substance abuse issues; 
• a training and skills support programme to help former rough sleepers into work run by charitable giving project ‘BEAM’.

The new night-time transport team will work as part of the Mayor’s London Street Rescue outreach team and focus on transport routes that homeless people are known to frequent, or that bus and Tube drivers have referred the team to. Members of the public can help alert the outreach team to anyone needing their help by using the online Streetlink service (www.streetlink.org.uk). The teams will connect people with services, including No Second Night Out that provides three 24-hour assessment hubs, to ensure people get a wide range of help immediately.  

London’s Transport Commissioner, Mike Brown, said: “The mayor’s new night-time transport team will be working hard to ensure homeless people on the transport system get the help they need. TfL is committed to doing more to help and support homeless Londoners and we have a long history of working alongside homeless charities and outreach projects.”