Manchester City Council have been called inhumane after banning homeless people from sleeping in tents, obtaining a court order stating that cardboard boxes, sleeping bags, bus shelters and doorways are ‘approved’ sleeping places, but tents are not.
After the issue of people sleeping rough in Manchester became more and more dire, the tents were used by homeless people as part of a protest to try and force the council to deal with the problem.
According to the council, they hope that the new regulations will force the protest – that has cost them £100,000 so far in legal costs – to be disbanded, with the tents popping up throughout the city centre.
Nigel Murphy, Manchester City Council’s executive member for neighbourhoods, claimed:
We are glad to have been granted the city centre wide injunction, which achieves what we wanted it to – which is to stop this group of homelessness protesters from simply moving to another location after we regain possession of St Ann’s Square and Castlefield.
We have always been very clear that our attempts to close the camps are not aimed at cracking down on lawful protests or in criminalising homeless people.
