Northampton's freezing rough sleepers 'should have been housed', forum admits

Rough sleeper charity Project 16:15's petition asking for the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol to be activated has been signed by more than 1,700 people

A homelessness forum has admitted its protocol for housing rough sleepers in freezing weather should have been activated twice in the last week.

More than 1,900 people have signed a petition calling for the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) to be activated in Northampton.

Rough sleepers will now be housed if it is predicted to drop below freezing for two hours overnight.

A councillor said it was "inhumane" to leave people out "in this weather".

Their anonymous post, on the rough sleeper charity Project 16:15's Facebook page, said the failure to activate SWEP made them "embarrassed to be a borough councillor".

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The charity started the petition calling on Northampton Single Homelessness Forum to activate SWEP.

The forum's members include Northampton Borough Council, homelessness charity The Hope Centre and housing provider NAASH.

One signatory wrote: "No-one should be hungry and without some comfort. These are human beings not statistics."

"The PDSA [People's Dispensary for Sick Animals] say to take your dogs in as it's too cold, but unfortunately we won't bring our fellow human beings in," the councillor added.

Project 16:15's Stan Robertson said: "Ultimately more people will die.

"We have had deaths every winter. People on the street are begging for SWEP to open because they are so cold."

Stan Robertson said he feared people would die on Northampton's streets if SWEP was not activated

The Hope Centre issued a statement which said the SWEP criteria should be "more flexible".

It added Hope had "been in regular contact with the council," but the decision to call SWEP was made by the local authority.

How SWEP works in Northampton

SWEP will now be activated in Northampton if temperatures are predicted to fall below freezing for at least two hours overnight

• The old criteria said SWEP would be activated if the Met Office forecast temperatures would be freezing or below for three consecutive nights

• The forum said "winter, suitable COVID-safe premises" were available and "everyone sleeping rough will be offered their own room in an emergency overnight shelter" if SWEP was activated

• The new criteria says if the overnight temperature was forecast to be -1°C (30.2°F) or lower for at least two hours, SWEP would be activated

In a statement, the homelessness forum said overnight temperatures in Northampton had dropped to freezing or -1°C (30.2°F) on two nights in the last week.

"With the benefit of hindsight - when we now know that overnight temperatures were actually lower than what the Met Office had forecast - the group has acknowledged that SWEP ought to have been activated," the statement added.