One in 5 homeless in London are Romanians

NEARLY a fifth of rough sleepers on the streets of London are Romanian, a Whitehall report said yesterday.

It said that of 7,581 rough sleepers, 1,388 said they were from Romania – almost double the 730 recorded last year

The high count of street dwellers from Romania follows complaints from local politicians that organised gangs from the country allocate areas for sleeping and run crime operations covering begging, robbery and prostitution.

According to the estimates published by the Communities Department, fewer than half the rough sleepers in London are British. The count, carried out over the year to the end of March 2015 by the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain), said there were 3,212 British rough sleepers – 43 per cent of the total. There were 639 from Poland and 227 from Lithuania.

The large number of Romanian street sleepers was the subject of an inquiry by Westminster Council in 2012.

It found: ‘Romanians are being brought into the country via coaches that drop them off at Marble Arch directly, even though there is not an official coach stand or drop-off point there.

‘There is intelligence from the night wardens that some of the individuals admit to having been allocated pitches prior to their leaving their country, and instructed to defend the pitch and work it for money.

‘This influx of same-language rough sleepers is utterly unprecedented in scale and nature. This situation is unique as we have never encountered this volume of concentration of such street-based activity.’’

The Chain figures said 57 per cent of London rough sleepers were seen by charity workers just once in the year.

Only 6 per cent were seen sleeping in the open more than ten times over the 12 months.