Councils have been accused of using a “form of social cleansing” after it emerged they were misusing powers to hand out fines for rough sleeping.

There has been an 89 per cent rise in local authorities issuing Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs), which criminalise acts such as rough sleeping and begging, in the last three years, according to data obtained through freedom of information requests.

The figures revealed a sharp rise in on-the-spot fines for breaches of PSPOs – almost 10,000 penalties of up to £100 were handed out in 2018.

Guidance from the Home Office in 2017 said PSPOs should not target rough sleeping or restrict the everyday use of public places.

Introduced in 2014, the orders allow local authorities to ban behaviour deemed to have a “detrimental effect” on “the local community’s quality of life”.

Critics said the “petty” powers are being used over-zealously to punish people for “entirely innocuous actions”.

Rosie Brighouse, of human rights group Liberty, said the orders were a “particularly cruel way to respond to people’s poverty”. She added: “PSPOs are a very blunt instrument – they can only lead to people being fined. We also worry in a lot of ways it’s a form of social cleansing.”

The figures, obtained by civil liberties group the Manifesto Club, reveal that 276 orders were made by 147 councils between August 2017 and January 2019.

This is an average of 15 per month – compared with an average of eight per month between November 2014 and February 2016.

Josie Appleton, director of Manifesto Club, said: “Thousands of people are being criminalised for actions such as sitting on the floor, appealing for charity donations, or asking for casual work.

“PSPOs often target the homeless and others who lack the power to defend themselves. These orders are illiberal, scary and a public joke.”

Meanwhile, the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) has warned that the government’s claim that rough sleeping fell by 2 per cent in England last year was based on unreliable figures.

Chair of UKSA, Sir David Norgrove, said the official figures for 2018 should not be used to make claims about rough sleeping until ministers address concerns that some councils had deliberately underreported the scale of the crisis.

The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Show all 10 1 /10 The Stats: Homelessness in the UK The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Sleeping rough up 165% from 2010 The total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2018 was 4,677, up 2,909 people or 165% from the 2010 total of 1,768 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London rough sleepers up 13% The number of people sleeping rough increased by 146 or 13% in London since 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London accounted for 27% of people sleeping rough in England London accounted for 27% of the total number of people sleeping rough in England. This is up from 24% of the England total in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 64% of rough sleeps UK nationals 64% were UK nationals, compared to 71% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 14% of rough sleepers are women 14% of the people recorded sleeping rough were women, the same as in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 6% were aged 25 years or under, compared to 8% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Thousands of families staying in temporary housing Almost 79,000 families were staying in temporary housing in the last three months of 2017 because they didn't have a permanent home, compared with 48,010 in the same period eight years before Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Reduction in families living in temporary housing before Coalition government There had been a significant reduction in families living in such conditions before the Coalition government came into power, with the number having fallen by 52 per cent between 2004 and 2010 under the Labour government AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Families staying in temporary has risen since But the figure has crept up in each of the past seven years, from 69,140 in the last quarter of 2015, to 75,740 in the same period in 2016 and 78,930 at the end of last year Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Nearly 58,000 families accepted as homeless (2018) Nearly 58,000 families have been accepted as homeless by their local council in the past year (as of March 2018), equating to an increase of 8 per cent over the last five years Getty

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are clear PSPOs should be used proportionately to tackle anti-social behaviour, and not to target specific groups or the most vulnerable in our communities.

“We set this out clearly when we refreshed the statutory guidance for frontline professionals on the use of the anti-social behaviour powers and councils must consult with the local police and appropriate community representatives before they publish the draft order.