National Rough Sleeping Count: Newham October 2025

 

On Tuesday evening at 11pm I went to the Newham Dockside headquarters with fellow volunteers and outreach workers for a briefing by Council officers on this years National Rough Sleeping Count in Newham. 

Every year there is a national count of people sleeping on our streets. I believe that at least 5 London Boroughs were holding their annual count on Tuesday/Wednesday morning. Newham Council however also does local counts every 2 months

After the briefing we were divided into several different groups and given maps and information sheets for a particular area in Newham to visit between 12 midnight and 3am. The aim was to simply count the number of people in that area who were bedded down and sleeping on the streets. If people were awake and wanted to engage, we would take their details and give an information sheet about a local drop in day centre where they can have hot food, shower and clean their clothes. Also we would arrange for outreach advice workers to visit them at their location from 5am onwards the following morning. 

I was a driver for one of these groups, there was a outreach team leader and two other volunteers from a local housing charity with me and we visited 7 locations in our designated area, which were known "hot spots" for people sleeping on the streets. The weather was dry and quite mild for the time of year. 

We found one young man sitting on the floor outside a community centre behind a wheelie bin who denied he was sleeping there but later he was seen sleeping on the floor. As we returned to my car another young man approached us and said he was homeless and asked if we could help. We took details and gave advice and arranged for him to see the early morning outreach team.

Next outside a public building, were two young men preparing to go to sleep near a very busy and noisy road but content to speak to us and we also made arrangements for them as well to speak to the outreach team and visit the day centre. 

All the other sites had no one visible. We returned to Newham Dockside and reported back. I was then able to get back home by 2am. 

I do not know what the final "count" was in Newham or elsewhere but I believe the figures are fed back to the Government to inform their policy on rough sleeping. I will post further on the results and any resulting action that will be taken to address this crisis.