Soup runs and the Big Society

Not really a WR issue but I felt it might raise an interesting debate, especially as we are all being encouraged to look after our less fortunate fellow humans.

I was listening to the Jeremy Vine Show yesterday while driving to see a client.  They had news story regarding the proposal by Westminster City Council to pass a bylaw making it illegal for any organisation to make soup runs to homeless people in certain areas of the city, specifically in the environs of the cathedral. The penalty for doing so was a fine of up to £500.00.

The Council spokesperson said that the Council felt justified in doing this as;

a) the provision of a soup run was counterproductive as it did not encourage rough sleepers to seek ‘indoor’ help such as shelters and so forth.

b) that rough sleepers tend to congregate in locations where they know a soup run will deliver and this has led to residents feeling threatened, although I do not recall that she was able to cite any specific incident where any actual harm had come to a resident.

The representative of the organization providing the soup run was quite clear that many of the rough sleepers were overseas nationals with no access to state benefits and therefore no means of paying for any sort of hostel place or anything else for that matter.

Westminster Council have got form for this kind of initiative, having “hot washed” rough sleepers off the streets in the not-too-distant past.

‘Hot washing is ‘inhumane’, say researchers