Councils have given thousands of rough sleepers and homeless people one-way train, bus and flight tickets to leave areas and sometimes even to leave the country in the last four years, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

The tickets were bought through “reconnection policies” that aim to encourage rough sleepers to voluntarily return to areas where they have family and support networks. It has been described as “street cleansing” and an abdication of responsibility by some campaigners and MPs.

Data obtained by the Guardian shows for the first time that 6,810 travel tickets have been purchased across 83 councils in England and Wales since 2015.

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Local authorities have defended the policy, saying the tickets are voluntarily accepted and only provided where there is a verifiable offer of accommodation and support. Some rough sleepers, however, said they had been offered tickets to places they had never been and felt as if they were given no choice.

Tickets to other parts of the UK and abroad were frequently not followed up and little is known about what happened to their recipients , according to data obtained through freedom of information requests to all councils in England and Wales. Experts have said that without support and accommodation, the policy does not resolve homelessness but just moves it to another area.

The Greater London area accounted for the majority of tickets purchased, with 4,159, more than a third of which were for journeys out of the UK, mostly to destinations in eastern Europe. More than 100 tickets have been purchased since 2015 by local authorities in Oxford, Nottingham, Blackpool, Manchester, Leicester and Exeter.

Philip Sempers, 35, said that when he was homeless two years ago he was offered a one-way train ticket to Birmingham. “I split up with my ex and was sofa surfing for a few months … I got to the end of my tether … the council said: ‘The only thing we can do is give you a train ticket to go to Birmingham so you can stay in a hostel there,’” he said.

“They said there was no accommodation for me in the whole of the county I was in, in south-eastern England. There was nowhere for me to go. They tried looking for hours and hours and said the only thing on offer was a train ticket to get me to Birmingham. I said: ‘I just need somewhere to live. This is supposed to be a first-world country.’”

Sempers said he was asked if he knew anyone in Birmingham and explained he did not. “I said I’ve never been to Birmingham in my life … When I got there I felt really lost.”

Before April this year, local authorities in England were only obliged to offer support to homeless people with a local connection. Following the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act in April, they must refer homeless people with no local connection to support services in an area of the country where they are judged to have ties.

Gabor Kasza, 22, who came to the UK from Hungary as a child, says people from eastern Europe are often offered plane tickets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gabor Kasza, 22. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

“I have heard of councils giving people one-way train tickets. Often they say they don’t have accommodation in London and they want to get rid of people, send them out ... They also give plane tickets to eastern European people. They tried to do it to me once. The most vulnerable people might take it, but most people won’t if they have a job here.

“Some councils still offer the tickets in a way that makes you feel like you have to take it though. If you don’t take it they say you are making yourself homeless and are reluctant to help you.

“I know people still offered plane tickets … they say we can offer you a reconnection to your home country. If you don’t take it sometimes they say they can offer you no help, they say they want you to work with them. But some people have nothing to go home to, they send people back to nothing. You go homeless there and it’s the same thing but in my country with what you earn you never stand up again.”

Claire Matthews, who runs a soup kitchen in Bournemouth, where 119 “reconnections” took place between 2014 and 2017, says the rough sleepers she meets call the policy “street cleansing”, and that the tickets are only right if councils follow up and provide support.

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The former health minister Norman Lamb, who has been outspoken about rising homelessness and rough sleeping in the UK, said: “What’s happening is inhumane and utterly inappropriate. I’m conscious that many people who are street homeless are also battling mental health problems and addiction issues, and to just use this policy as a means of cleansing an area or city centre when dealing with people who are trying to cope with a whole host of challenges is disgusting and should not happen. It’s scandalous how many people are now street homeless.”

When contacted by the Guardian, Oxford city council said it never “reconnected” rough sleepers without their full cooperation and ensured there was a “legitimate and verifiable offer of a bed and support”.

A spokesperson for Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, said “reconnections” were voluntary and that the service to offer non-UK nationals tickets home often involved accompanying a rough sleeper back to their country. Blackpool council said it was contacted every year by 200 single homeless people who did not have local connections asking for help, with two-thirds of them returned home.



The homelessness charity Crisis said in the right circumstances the policy could help rough sleepers rebuild their lives, but that moving people to a different part of the country via a one-way ticket and not following up could exacerbate the problem.

Jon Sparkes, the chief executive of Crisis, said: “The landmark Homelessness Reduction Act, which came into force this year, removes the barriers of local connection. This new approach is about taking every opportunity to resolve someone’s homelessness and one-way tickets don’t fit the wording or the spirit of the act.”

The communities secretary, James Brokenshire, said local authorities had a duty to provide accommodation to homeless people in their areas and that guidance for councils had recently been strengthened.