England could face its worst winter homelessness crisis in more than two decades and radical action is needed to prevent the situation from deteriorating, the Big Issue founder has said.

John Bird, a life peer who set up the magazine sold on the street by homeless people, said the UK risked moving back to the “desperate” times of the 1990s when the Big Issue started.



“It could be the worst winter for over two decades … I am not just talking about rising numbers [of homeless people], but also the fact money is going down and not up. It is likely to make future winters harder, and next year threatens to be even worse,” Lord Bird said.

“I am also talking about the number of really distressed people on the street. I have noticed an increase in young, very distressed women. It’s unbelievable and there was not as much of that in the early 1990s. That is linked to the growth of recreational drug use.”

While the situation was not as bad as 26 years ago, “we are heading almost inexorably towards that”, he said.

“I am not a statistician and I am not going to bandy figures around, but when I go around Euston in London or various cities I have been in … I was in Wakefield last week and it’s not traditionally known as a city with rough sleepers, but there were people around begging. We have to do something radical about it. We have got to stop the situation getting worse,” Bird said.

The Big Issue was founded in 1991 by Bird and Gordon Roddick, the Body Shop co-founder, in response to the increasing number of homeless people in London. The number of households accepted for housing assistance in England peaked in 2003-04 at 135,580, before falling to 41,780 in 2009-10.

Figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) show that since 2011, homelessness has been rising again. The number of people sleeping rough in England shot up by 134% between 2010 and 2016. The number of households living in temporary accommodation went up by 60% over that period.



Bird said the situation could be particularly bad this year because of local council cuts and less funding for homeless organisations. Poor mental health provision had led to a rise in homelessness, he added.



“Welfare cuts have had an impact, but I think the real thing that has hit is the removal of support for local authorities … Councils have then cut back on support for those working with the most dispossessed,” he said.

“Welfare changes will have an effect, but it’s not been as brutal as turning off the taps to local councils. The cost of austerity is unsustainable.”

Bird called for a greater focus on “transforming” social services and working on preventative measures.

“Social security should be about improving people’s lives, not having them drip-fed something that is not enough anyway … If we can change our thinking about poverty, we can sort it out. We administer to the poor from above and do things for them, not with them. They have to be given the freedom to develop themselves,” he said.

A DCLG spokesman said: “Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping are complex issues with no single solution, but this government is determined to help the most vulnerable in society.

“We’re investing £550m to 2020 to address the issue and implementing the most ambitious legislative reform in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act. This act means more people get the help they need earlier to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place. We’re also committed to halving rough sleeping by 2020, and eliminating it altogether by 2027.”

Bird, who launched a bill in the House of Lords this summer aimed at helping millions of renters get access to credit, was speaking before the Big Issue’s 26th birthday celebrations last week. The magazine held an event in London, including an exhibition of his artwork.

Speaking about how the organisation had changed over the years, Bird said with the opening of the Big Issue shop, a online platform committed to selling products with a “social echo”, it had focused on publicising ethical trading.



“We are trying to spread the message about trade … We really want to drive home the fact that the only reason the gig economy exists, or that Amazon is so resplendent at the top of the pile, is because people buy from them. That is the power of the buyer,” he said.

“We need to break the monopoly by creating alternatives, for example an ethical Tesco and Amazon. If Mr Jeremy Corbyn gets into office, we could be going to him to say: ‘Give us the money to create a social Amazon and see off the people who the public see as arseholes.’ If the public don’t like these people, then there should be a social alternative. Instead of investing in gated communities, let’s invest in the community.”