The Tory politician demanding police take homeless people off the streets ahead of the Royal Wedding is a paid director of a government agency that’s supposed to be tackling rough sleeping.

Windsor and Maidenhead council chief Simon Dudley hit the headlines after asking Thames Valley police to use the 1824 Vagrancy Act to remove homeless people from the streets before the ceremony at Windsor Castle on May 19. He wrote: “A large number of adults that are begging in Windsor are not in fact homeless, and if they are homeless they are choosing to reject all support services to beg on the streets of Windsor. In the case of homelessness amongst this group, it is therefore a voluntary choice.”

So it’s a surprise to find that Dudley sits on the board of a public body – the Homes and Communities Agency – with responsibility for helping homeless people! The leader of Theresa May’s local authority said he expected to be paid between £10,000 and £20,000 upon taking-up the taxpayer-funded role in February. One of the Agency’s major programmes is the Homelessness Change fund, which is designed to: “Provide tailored hostel accommodation and improved facilities for the provision of healthcare, training or education for rough sleepers with the aim of helping them off the streets and transforming their lives.” 

However, Prime Minster Theresa May has publicly challenged the call by saying: “I don’t agree with the comments that the leader of the council has made. I think it is important that councils work hard to ensure that they are providing accommodation for those people who are homeless, and where there are issues of people who are aggressively begging on the streets then it’s important that councils work with the police to deal with that aggressive begging.”

Charities that work with the homeless said recourse to the law is not the answer. “Stigmatising or punishing [rough sleepers] is totally counterproductive,” said Greg Beales of Shelter. People sleeping on the street were “often at their lowest point, struggling with a range of complex problems and needs and they are extremely vulnerable, at risk from cold weather, illness and even violence”.

He added: “They desperately need our help, support and advice to move off the streets into safety and, eventually, into a home.”

In a blog for Huffington Post, Joe Anderson wrote: “This is the net result of eight years’ of austerity: A toxic mix of public service cuts, housing shortages, high rents, welfare changes, low wages, benefit sanctions and rising drug use.

Earlier this week, the Public Accounts Committee reported what all of us working on the frontline knew already: the government’s response to dealing with homelessness and rough sleeping across England has been woeful.

‘Unacceptably complacent’ was the term used. That’s one way of saying that leaving 9,100 human beings to sleep on our streets is a shaming, infuriating disgrace. Councils are struggling to cope with unprecedented demand for services – with less and less money to pay for them.

I am proud that we spend £11million every year tackling homelessness – intervening early to help families and individuals avoid falling between the cracks – even though our central government funding has been slashed by two-thirds (£470million) since 2010. While our Citizen Support Scheme includes help for people facing benefit sanctions – ensuring they don’t get evicted.

Last month, 133 people presented to our team as homeless and at imminent risk of rough sleeping, of which 92% (122) were supported and successfully prevented from spending a first night out on the street. I am now determined that Liverpool will be the first major city in the country to end rough sleeping.

This has put me at odds with the Government because we are ignoring their ‘no recourse to public funds’ rule. Any rough sleeper in my city will get help. No exceptions. No bureaucracy. We are simply ignoring this heartless and unworkable diktat.

Ministers can go and whistle. As far as I am concerned, it is utterly immoral not to do everything I possibly can to provide my fellow human beings with some basic dignity and protection. Especially at Christmas.

If ministers have a problem with that, then they know where I am.”

You can read the full blog here.

It is unbelievable that, a time of record homelessness, over 11,000 homes have stood empty for over ten years.

The data, collected by the Liberal Democrats through freedom of information requests to about 275 councils, showed 60,000 properties had been empty for two years or more, 23,000 for five years or more, and over 11,000 have stood empty for at least 10 years. The areas that responded with the largest number of homes empty for six months or more were Durham with 6,500, Leeds with 5,724, Bradford with 4,144, Cornwall with 3,273 and Liverpool with 3,093.

Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, told the Guardian: “At a time when the homelessness crisis is worsening and more and more people are sleeping out in the cold on our streets, it is a national scandal that thousands of homes across the country are sitting empty.”

The research also showed that just one in 13 councils are making use of empty dwelling management orders (EDMO) – the powers that can be used by local authorities to take over properties that have been empty for at least six months. Only 19 of the 247 councils in England and Wales that responded had used an EDMO in the past five years. Of these, only six had used one in the past year. In total, councils returned about 23,000 empty homes back into use, including through direct action and the work of empty home teams.

The government announced at the budget that it would try to encourage owners of empty homes to bring their properties back into use by allowing local authorities to increase the council tax premium from 50% to 100%. However, the charity Empty Homes said at the time that the council tax increase would do little to deter those buying properties as investment as “for a very wealthy buyer spending millions, 100% council tax is not really enough of a disincentive”. The charity said it would be more helpful if the government carried out a review into why overseas buyers kept their properties empty.

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: “We’ve given councils a range of powers to bring empty homes back into use and the number of empty homes is down a third since 2010 to its lowest since records began. At the same time, we’re implementing the major changes to law and investing over £1bn to 2020 to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.”

After the Grenfell fire, data accidentally released by Kensington & Chelsea council revealed a string of oligarchs, foreign royalty and multimillionaire businesspeople as the owners of vacant properties in the borough where the deadly disaster left scores of people homeless. Owners of the 1,652 properties listed as unoccupied by Kensington and Chelsea council included a Ukrainian billionaire fighting extradition to the US, a former mayor of New York, a high-profile luxury property developer and a senior television executive.

The chair of house building firm Persimmon has resigned over his role in orchestrating a £100m-plus bonus for the company’s chief executive.

According to a report in The Guardian, Nicholas Wrigley, the company’s chair and a former banker, said he regretted not capping the company’s bonus scheme and was leaving “in recognition of this omission”. The scheme, believed to be Britain’s most generous ever bonus payout, will give more than £500m to 150 senior staff, including the award to the chief executive, Jeff Fairburn. Wrigley had put pressure on Fairburn to donate some of his bonus to charity, although Persimmon declined to comment.

The payouts, in company shares that can then be cashed in, are linked to the FTSE 100’s dividend payments and stock market performance, which has been significantly boosted by the help-to-buy scheme. Under help to buy, the Treasury provides a loan worth 20% of the value of a property, although the buyer must also provide a 5% deposit from their own funds.

The programme has provided a significant boost to property developers’ sales since George Osborne introduced it in 2013. Persimmon’s share price has more than doubled since help to buy launched in April 2013. About half of Persimmon homes sold last year were to help-to-buy recipients, meaning government money helped finance the sales.

Fairburn is due to collect the first £50m worth of bonus shares on 31 December. The scheme, which is based on the level of dividend returned to shareholders, was meant to take 10 years to pay out, but the company has accelerated dividend payments. This means Fairburn, other executives and more than 100 middle managers are likely to collect all of the bonus shares by July 2018, far ahead of the 2021 schedule. Fairburn’s tranche of shares was worth £128m based on Friday night’s closing share price, but he is likely to take home about £110m once he has paid the option prices on the shares.

John Hunter, the chair of the UK Shareholder Association, which represents small investors, said the bonus scheme was “completely ridiculous” and was based solely on the dividend payments. He said: “Any bloody fool can pay dividends – it’s just paying them their own money. The scheme is doing the opposite of what it is meant to do – incentivise performance and retention. How does this incentivise people when they’re all sitting on fortunes? If you’re a manager and you’re getting millions you would retire on the spot.”

A Home Office policy to deport rough sleepers from countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) has been ruled unlawful by the high court.

Since 2016 the Home Office has designated rough sleeping as an abuse of EU free movement rights in its administrative removal policy. However, the court ruled that the Home Office’s position was contrary to EU law. It also found the policy was discriminatory and amounted to an unlawful systematic verification of the EEA nationals’ rights to reside.

The Home Office may now face claims for unlawful detention where it has detained individuals on the basis of its policy. Those who have been removed from the UK and face a 12-month re-entry ban may also be entitled to have that ban lifted and be readmitted to the UK. The evidence showed that the initial questioning and verification was part of a blanket policy, which only occurred because, under the terms of the policy, EEA nationals rough sleeping were presumed to be abusing their rights of residence.

A spokesman said: “In reality, many homeless people targeted by the Home Office have fallen on hard times and are working but unable to afford accommodation. The numbers of European nationals sleeping rough have been steadily increasing since 2010. But rather than making substantial or systematic attempts to provide solutions to homelessness through accommodation and employment support, local and national authorities have opted to add enforcement measures to austerity policies. We hope this decision will put an end to a social policy which used imprisonment and deportation as solutions to eradicate homelessness.”

The Public Interest Law Unit welcomed the judgment, saying: “We are delighted that the court has been willing to protect the rights of a vulnerable group of workers who have been stigmatised both by the authorities and by sections of the media. Experience shows that if we stand by and allow a marginalised group to be victimised others can expect the same treatment later. Homelessness cannot be dealt with humanely by detaining or forcibly removing homeless people. This practice has been found unlawful and must immediately cease.”

The European commission has said EU member states have no right to deport EU citizens for being homeless and said EU citizens had a right to live in other EU countries “irrespective of whether they are homeless or not”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are disappointed by today’s judgment. However, we respect the court’s findings and will not be appealing. We will consider carefully what steps are necessary to ensure we reflect the judgment in future enforcement.”