Concern as cold weather could cause 'significant risk to life'

Liverpool's Whitechapel Centre is preparing for the winter months Liverpool's leading homeless charity is "bracing itself" for the winter period, which poses a "significant risk to life" for those sleeping rough on the city's streets. The Whitechapel Centre is keeping "a close eye" on the situation as the government releases thousands of prisoners early, potentially putting further strain on the work it does. The charity's Services Manager Sophie Mayor says they've seen "a drop in funding" while she claims " rough sleeping has increased to an all time high", with the centre aware of 178 individuals on the streets in August.

Speaking to the ECHO, she said: “We always brace ourselves coming into the winter. Winter poses significant risk to life and cold weather can kill people who are sleeping on the streets. We do start preparing early for what it’s going to look like.

The provisions we have in place over winter time can vary from year to year based on intelligence we’re getting in the lead up to that period. “Last year, for example, the Home Office accelerated the asylum decision process, meaning that a lot of people were going through the asylum process a lot quicker and therefore getting decisions a lot quicker. That meant that the Home Office accommodation that they were staying in would no longer be available.

So we had a lot of people who were newly granted refugees that were becoming homeless. Because of that intelligence, we knew we had to put things in place t.