"People can die" - rough sleeping rises in North East Lincolnshire
A homeless shelter in Grimsby says it's having to turn away vulnerable rough sleepers.
The cold weather will pose a genuine risk to life for the rising number of people sleeping rough in North East Lincolnshire, according to a homeless shelter in Grimsby.
Harbour Place has said they're increasingly forced to turn away vulnerable people with all 10 places for rough sleepers in their shelter taken up. Figures from homeless charity Shelter record a 10% rise in the number of people sleeping rough in North East Lincolnshire between 2022 and 2023.
Harbour Place project manager Dennis Batty said: "In very cold weather, absolutely people can die. Some people have been so disenfranchised from all support for so long that they're not getting medical care or engaging with the services they need to get better.
"Imagine the flu when you're wet and you're sat on a bank somewhere and trying to keep out the wind, that doesn't translate to anything we suffer from, and they're the things that kill people - simple things."
Shelter estimates 159 people in North East Lincolnshire are homeless. It says homelessness in England is "at a record high and is continuing to rise", with 279,390 homeless at a given night as of 30 June 2023.
Dennis Batty said: "We've seen a lot more people directly off the street using the shelter - we're getting more direct support to those people that are rough sleeping and they're taking up our accommodation now - that's been the prerequisite of what we've done all this time but we're seeing a tremendous uplift in that now.
"In a normal day like today you can get anywhere from 25 to 35 people coming through the door, on top of those that have been staying with us in the night shelter, so that's another 10, and then going out at night time we probably see another 10."