Why Must Brighton Be 'Pushed' to Help Its Freezing Homeless?

In Brighton, local activists and opposition councillors have been banging their heads against a brick wall trying to get homeless services to offer rough sleepers help in deadly-cold conditions.

In the last few weeks, the UK has seen widespread sub-zero temperatures. When temperatures drop below freezing, local authorities have a "humanitarian obligation" to ensure that no one in their area is sleeping rough, according to government guidance known as SWEP – the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol.

National guidelines say that SWEP should be triggered when forecasts predict three consecutive sub-zero days. But it also asks councils to employ a "common sense approach" to factors like wind chill. Above all, the goal should be to "prevent death at all times, not only when a fixed temperature threshold is reached".

In Brighton, where one in 69 people are homeless, the Labour council and its outreach partners, the Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) and national homelessness charity St Mungo’s, have effectively done away with the "common sense approach", and activists are trying to get them to move away from exactly the kind of rigid threshold that national guidance cautions against.

In replacing that guidance with their own, Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) and its partners have removed any mention of accounting for wind chill or wet weather. They call this "enhanced SWEP provision".

Dr Tim Worthley of Arch Healthcare, an NHS service for Brighton’s homeless, said, "Not providing SWEP when the wind chill factor is below zero over the coming weeks is placing lives at risk."

"In theory, there could be two inches of snow on the ground," said Jim Deans, an experienced volunteer among Brighton’s homeless community, "and if it was 'above zero', which it could be, they don’t open SWEP. And they’ve proven that."

In email conversations seen by VICE, local Green Party councillor David Gibson asked "what’s happening?" as wind chill-affected temperatures dropped below freezing in the last few days of November. "Surely SWEP should be open according to our revised protocol?" Jim Deans also weighed in, citing the Met Office’s predicted "feels like" temperature of minus six degrees on the night of the 30th of November.

However, with the Met Office predicting a balmy 1 degree without accounting for wind chill, the local SWEP night shelter (staffed by BHT and St Mungo's) remained closed. "Maybe it would be a good idea to read the protocol," read a St Mungo's employee's response to an audience of councillors, volunteers and medical professionals. "Hope this clears your SWEP query up."

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That response isn’t the only thing which suggests that the tail sometimes wags the dog when it comes to the million pound contract between BHCC and their outreach service provider.

Further emails seen by VICE suggest councillors feel they have to "push" their outreach partners to open shelters in accordance with SWEP. Tom Druitt, another Green Party councillor, expressed dismay at a "lack of serious acknowledgement of the seriousness of the situation" among council staff and their outreach partners.

I asked Councillor Clare Moonan, the council's rough sleeping lead, why councillors had to "push" Mungo’s to implement the protocol. She said, "As a council we take rough sleeping really, really seriously, it's one of our priorities as an administration. Obviously when the weather is cold our severe weather emergency shelters are a real life-saving service that we can offer. So we will be doing absolutely the very most we can to open them as much as is possible for the rest of the winter."

Moonan told VICE that any broadening of the criteria would mean "having a look, with our partners who provide SWEP, at how much flexibility we’re going to be able to accommodate within the resources that we have". Translation: we’ll have to see if we can afford it.

However, the council's own figures show that BHCC has underspent on SWEP provisions by around £100,000 in the last six years. Brighton has seen a ten-fold rise in rough sleeping in that time. Opposition councillor David Gibson says that the underspend means, in simple terms, "that it’s not been open for as many nights as it could have been".

Underspend on the annual SWEP budget is rolled back into general budget, giving BHCC – which saw a 13 percent cut in central government funding from 2016 to 2017 – a financial reason not to expand their severe weather criteria.

"I would've expected that to be rolled into next year's SWEP, or even handed back to the government," said Tom Druitt, a Green Party councillor who is pushing for the council to open up vacant properties as emergency homeless shelters. "I found it staggering, to be honest… 'Let's plug a hole somewhere else because we've got some money left in SWEP.'"

A spokesperson for St Mungo’s said, "Local authorities in most areas have the control to activate SWEP. Our outreach teams are aware of the reality of the situation on the ground and our priority is always people’s safety. St Mungo’s aim throughout the year is to support people inside and away from sleeping on the streets. During severe weather, outreach teams are, and should be, making sure that anyone who is vulnerable is helped out of the cold."

@bobtrafford