Wagamama’s owners say the spikes were there before the restaurant was started (Picture: SWNS)

An activist has branded Wagamama ‘b*****ds’ over spikes used to stop homeless people sleeping outside one of their busiest restaurants.

A mystery graffiti artist painted the word on a floor-to-ceiling window at the chain’s restaurant in Clink Street, Southwark, central London.

The wavy concrete structures beneath, known as ‘hostile architecture’, are a controversial way to force homeless people to move on.

Witnesses spotted the graffiti on Monday as they passed the branch, which is close to the Tate Modern and Borough Market.


A Southwark Council spokesperson says the deterrent sits on private property and is not something they would ever install.



Big Issue Foundation Chief Executive Stephen Robertson said: ‘Hostile Architecture is a well and long-established design approach intended and purposed towards moving a ‘problem’ from public view.

The ‘hostile architecture’ is designed to get homeless people to move on (Picture: SWNS)

An activist spray painted the window to show their disgust (Picture: SWNS)

Homeless charities have condemned the spikes (Picture: SWNS)

‘It re-enforces social divisions, the ‘haves and the have nots’ as it were, and it endorses aggressive responses to the humanitarian crisis that is ‘homelessness’ today.

‘It sits hand-in-hand with the pointless ‘vagrancy act’ and had no place in a solution focused democracy.’

A Salvation Army spokesperson said the deterrents ‘can make already vulnerable people more marginalised and push them further away from organisations that can support them.’

Head of Public Affairs at youth homelessness charity Centrepoint Paul Noblet said the architecture only drives people ‘out of sight’ instead of getting them proper support and accommodation.

The spikes are outside one of Wagamama’s busiest restaurants in Southwark, London (Picture: SWNS)

Passers-by noticed the spray paint on Monday (Picture: SWNS)

Restaurant Group PLC is investigating who first installed the spikes (Picture: SWNS)

It is not clear how long the ‘homeless spikes’ have been in place.

A spokesperson for Wagamama’s owners The Restaurant Group PLC said Network Rail owns the lease to the land and that the deterrent has been there since the restaurant arrived in 2005.

The company is now investigating who originally installed the spikes and is making plans to remove them.

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