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The number of homeless camps forcibly cleared by councils across the UK has more than trebled in five years.

Stats show tents, cardboard structures and a garden shed were among the hundreds of such encampments torn down – with the number of so-called tent city clearances up from 72 in 2014 to 254 last year.

Charities say the camp clearances are a symptom of an acute homelessness problem, driven by welfare changes, a lack of properly funded support services and insecure housing.

Campaigners have criticised authorities for a heavy-handed approach that sees some councils seizing tents and charging for their return.

Complaints to councils about homeless encampments are up year on year –  from 277 in 2014 to 1,241 in 2018.

The number of people living in makeshift camps in the UK is not recorded as a standalone statistic.

There’s only the official rough sleeping figures – which come with a UK statistics regulator warning – aiming to include those people bedding down in tents and shelters.

But newly released FoI figures indicate an increasing problem.

“We know that people living in tents as a form of rough sleeping has shot up 165% since 2010,” said Matthew Downie, director of policy and external affairs at Crisis

“We have now reached unprecedented levels of homelessness across England.

“The rise is out of control, we are at point where, council by council, people are struggling to know what on earth to do, particularly when there is not enough affordable housing,” said Downie.

“The idea of dispersal and enforcement action against people who are homeless and destitute is not simply the wrong thing to do in moral terms but practically the most unhelpful thing to do as well.

“It drives people further into destitution and makes it more likely people will spend longer on the streets,” he said.

The FoI response reveals councils across the country used a range of legal powers – often enforced through court orders – to clear hundreds of homeless camps from 2014 to 2018 with the help of police.

In the past year, encampments of varying sizes have been reported in cities and towns such as Peterborough, Brighton, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds, London and Northampton.

Stephen Robertson, chief executive at the Big Issue Foundation, said the increasingly alarming situation was an output of “binary thinking at the highest levels.”

Encampment communities were, he said, being created because “government and policymakers blankly refuse to join these issues and opportunities up to bring about a feasible end to a humanitarian crisis.”

The Guardian asked all councils in the UK how many homeless encampments they had cleared since 2014, how many complaints about encampments they had received and details on charges for confiscated tents and possessions.

An encampment was defined as a location where one or more homeless people were living in the area in private or public land.

Three hundred and thirty six local authorities responded to the request.

The MHCLG stood by the “hundreds” more bed spaces and support staff provided for rough sleepers this year, and that £100m funding boost for eradicating rough sleeping.

The LGA said aid enforcement action was a last resort but a £421m funding gap was “hampering” efforts to tackle homelessness.