A homeless charity has criticised the council for using so-called “anti-homeless” benches throughout the capital’s\u00a0city centre.<\/p>\n
Boomerang Cardiff said metal bars across the seating is designed to put off\u00a0homeless people from lying down.<\/p>\n
The benches under fire are on Queen Street, St John Street, Mary Ann Street and Bute Terrace.<\/p>\n
Boomerang’s founder Paul Gwilym told CJS News: “I think it’s disgusting that someone in the local council has sat in a nice cosy chair and decided ‘let’s put these anti-homeless bars in place’.<\/p>\n
“People are so far fetched from reality it’s unbelievable.”<\/p>\n
Recent figures from Rough Sleepers Intervention Team (RSIT) said there has been a 44% increase in rough sleeping in Cardiff compared with the end of 2016.<\/p>\n
Councillor Lynda Thorne, Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities, said: “The notion that the Council is buying benches with features designed to stop rough sleepers using them as beds is frankly ridiculous.<\/p>\n
“What’s important in all of this is getting rough sleepers off the street, not worrying about whether lying on a bench is better for someone than lying on the floor.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A homeless charity has criticised the council for using so-called “anti-homeless” benches throughout the capital’s\u00a0city centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[743,744],"tags":[26,135,1098],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18970"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19116,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970\/revisions\/19116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}