Rough sleepers moved on from Eastbourne Railway Station

The task force has cleared and undertaken a deep-clean of the area.  Support has been offered to those who were sleeping rough, including advising on available accommodation.  Daily checks of the area will continue through the month and beyond.  We will be exploring solutions to develop the area longer-term to prevent future issues.

At this time, the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) is activated, meaning the rough sleepers are entitled to SWEP accommodation.  This also gives our officers the opportunity to engage and support people into longer term accommodation. 

These are usually people with complex needs. However, the current rough sleepers at the station have refused all offers of support and accommodation to date - most need wrap around support, including mental health and addiction support, but again, many will not engage fully with this. 

Our specialist team will continue to work with partners to prevent rough sleeping and homelessness in Eastbourne.  This will include a positive giving campaign that will urge the public to give to local charities rather than to people who beg. We strongly encourage people to donate to local homelessness charities, not give money to rough sleepers, which often causes more harm than good.

With support from our partners, our officers spend a huge amount of time ensuring rough sleepers have access to all of the support available to them. 

Through our Rough Sleeping Initiative commissioned services, we provide:

• Early morning outreach sessions
• A 12-bed assessment centre
• A 10-bed short stay, off the street accommodation unit with 24-hour staffing cover
• Housing First, a type of supported accommodation for the most complex individuals
• A multidisciplinary team of statutory agencies providing wrap-around support to the most complex clients
• Move-on support teams helping rough sleepers find and move into privately rented property

In addition to the support available to rough sleepers through the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) service, Eastbourne Housing Options and Wellbeing Service leads on the delivery of a multi-disciplinary homelessness prevention hub. Those who wish to make an application for support can come in person and receive advice and interventions - not just from housing but also from adult social care, substance misuse services, the wellbeing team, employment brokers, domestic abuse workers, and other specialist support services. 

More than 50% of those who access the hub are rough sleepers and the service has been instrumental in improving the way that services work together to support those cases.

There are day centres available at Salvation Army, Matthew 25 and Kingdom Way Trust, and we work closely in partnership with those organisations to maximise their capacity for this work and the range of interventions they can offer.  In addition, there are several volunteer groups in the borough who provide their own services including providing food.

We thank all of our partners for their continued commitment to support our longer term aims:

• Preventing homelessness is a priority across all services. Prevention gets the best outcomes for individuals and helps us make the best use of resources.
• We identify people at risk of homelessness early. We provide holistic support which reduces the risk of people becoming homeless again in the future.
• We work collaboratively and have a community-centred approach.
• We provide good quality, cost-effective temporary accommodation.
• We work to end rough sleeping.
• Needs within our homelessness services inform new developments of housing and accommodation.

If anyone has concerns about rough sleepers they believe are unknown to the council, these can be flagged through Streetlink at www.streetlink.org.uk

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