星空传媒

Rough sleepers with no connection to the area would be offered travel vouchers to leave under the draft homelessness strategy presented to the Tory-led council鈥檚 housing and property overview and scrutiny committee on 29 March.

The report claims that Scarborough has been experiencing 鈥渞elatively high levels of inward migration of transient rough sleepers鈥� due to its seaside location 鈥� although the council鈥檚 first formal count of rough sleepers in October last year revealed just 12. The council wants to halve that number.

The scheme mirrors a pilot project in York last year.

But a regional housing advice service said the idea needed to be treated cautiously and must never be used as a first resort.

Denise Rooney, coordinator for the York and North Yorkshire Housing Advice Research Project, said: 鈥淚f people want to return to another area then we don鈥檛 have a problem with that.

鈥淚f this is offered as a first option without exploring what their housing issues or needs are, then we would be a little concerned that people won鈥檛 be allowed to progress a housing or homelessness application.

鈥淭he person would still have nowhere to live and might need more support.鈥�

The draft report states that the action plan aims to use an 鈥渁ssertive and persistent鈥� approach to discourage rough sleeping. Other proposals include holding regular rough sleeping sweeps to identify homeless people and encourage them to seek help for their problems.

A spokeswoman for Scarborough council said: 鈥淭he vouchers are one idea that we are looking into. If people, for whatever reason, thought they would come to Scarborough and perhaps thought they would get a job and haven鈥檛 got the means to get back to friends and family, giving them a travel ticket or voucher might be one way of helping them get off the streets.鈥�