Council's help for rough sleepers during coldest weather months

As temperatures begin to drop and winter edges closer, South Tyneside Council is preparing to test a new approach to protecting people sleeping on the streets.

- by Chris Binding

It is a shift designed not only to keep rough sleepers safe during the coldest months, but also to bring the borough in line with most of its North East neighbours and to make a stretched homelessness budget go further.

At the centre of the change is the council's Severe Weather Emergency Protocol, known as SWEP.

Most people have never heard of it, yet for those living outdoors it can be the difference between life and death.

SWEP is, in the council's own words, a humanitarian obligation.

It is a temporary measure activated when weather conditions turn dangerous, intended to prevent fatalities on the streets.

Unlike statutory homelessness duties, SWEP is not required by law. There is no dedicated national funding. Councils must decide when to activate it, how to fund it and what support to offer.

In South Tyneside, where officially recorded rough sleeper numbers remain low, that creates a funding imbalance. Government winter pressures money is allocated largely according to the number of people counted on the streets.

With low numbers comes low funding, although need does not always match the statistics. When SWEP was activated 19 times last winter, covering 61 nights, the cost of providing nightly paid hotel and B and B accommodation reached £79,000. Only 15 per cent of that was covered by central government. The rest came from the council's core homelessness budget.