Cardiff
has a positive and proactive approach to assisting rough sleepers into
accommodation and we offer help and advice for individuals to engage with the range
of services available in the city.
Since April 2017, our Outreach
team and partners have brought 191 rough sleepers into accommodation.
We work with charities such as the
Wallich, Salvation Army and the Huggard to bring people in from the streets and
where this is not possible - because they choose not to access services or
accommodation - we work with them on a daily basis on the streets.
We
continue to work hard together to support people into services where they can
move away from life on the streets and begin to turn their lives around.
There is no policy in Cardiff of
confiscating sleeping bags or rough sleepers' personal property.
Clearly discarded belongings cannot
be left all day in shop doorways or on the street where they may cause an
obstruction to the public, a fire hazard or health hazard. If requested, for
example by the police, our teams will remove items causing an obstruction.
Fresh and clean bedding is readily
available from homeless charities in the city and some individuals leave
their bedding on the street, knowing that they can easily replace it with dry
bedding.
Officers monitor items which are
left on the street and seek to only remove items if they appear to have been
abandoned or if requests have been made to remove them by the police or
businesses who believe they have been abandoned.