HOMELESS groups are calling for urgent action to tackle rough sleeping after official figures are a “huge underestimation”.

Statistics from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government show 15 people are currently sleeping rough in Swindon.

But Kevin Maddison, founder and committee member of The Night Kitchen Swindon said: “15 is a huge underestimation. It is more like 30 or 40 rough sleepers on our streets at the moment. More definitely needs to be done to tackle the issue.”

Speaking of the government’s announcement last week to invest £236m to tackle rough sleeping through housing schemes, he said: “All steps taken by the government seems to be short term.

“We need a long-term budget solution so that appropriate services can be planned out for the long term.

“All limited budget amounts do is cause limited services in the short term, which then cause a huge lapse in support at the end,” he said

“We’ve had short-term budget solutions for decades, and these haven’t worked

,” Kevin added.

He called for more to be done to address the causes of homelessness.

Becky Davison, chairwoman of Swindon Night Shelter echoed this, saying: “We need more investment in drug and alcohol and mental health support. These are the issues that homeless people are often struggling with every day.

“90 per cent of people who access our services have other needs than just housing and we need better support for people across these areas.”

She added: “We also see a lot more people who are unstably housed, at risk of rough sleeping or caught in the cycle of homelessness.”

Rosemary Curtis, of Homeless Organisations Standing Together in Swindon, said putting money into new shelters is not always the answer.

“Homelessness is a very complex situation. Fundamentally the difficulty is how we can prevent it in the first place. We need to address the lack of affordable housing, the effect of austerity, what happens when relationships break down and people aren’t able to keep up mortgage payments for example.

“It’s important also we ask homeless people themselves what they want.”