The Vagrancy Act Repeal is a PR Smokescreen for Rebranded Cruelty
Streets Kitchen Statement: The Vagrancy Act Repeal is a PR Smokescreen for Rebranded Cruelty
Do not be gaslit by the timing of today’s announcement. Keir Starmer is desperately trying to secure a progressive legacy on his way out the door, wrapping himself in the flag of social justice by finally axing the Vagrancy Act 1824. But let’s look at the reality on the ground: we are being told to celebrate a ‘watershed moment’ while the state is simultaneously slipping through some of the harshest, most aggressive enforcement powers we have seen in generations.
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 isn’t a step forward—it is a rebranding of criminalisation. While politicians pat themselves on the back for scrapping a 202-year-old Victorian relic, the hostile environment is being modernised, expanded, and accelerated right under our noses. Here are just 5 reasons why absolutely nothing has improved for those experiencing homelessness:
Legacy-Building via Smokescreen: Scraping the Vagrancy Act is cheap political theatre when it is immediately replaced by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. The terminology has shifted to ‘nuisance rough sleeping’ and ‘spatial trespassing,’ but the target remains exactly the same: visible poverty.
Weaponising Public Spaces: Local authorities are being handed modern, fast-tracked administrative weapons. Aggressive dispersal orders and Community Protection Notices are being deployed with zero accountability to sweep people out of sight.
The Criminalisation of Basic Survival: Frontline teams are witnessing an urgent, escalating assault on the very tools needed to stay alive. The state is still systematically seizing tents, sleeping bags, and bedding—treating life-saving shelter as a public nuisance or litter.
Driving Vulnerable People into Danger: Increased enforcement doesn’t solve homelessness; it forces it into the shadows. By displacing people from lit, populated town centres, these laws push our neighbours into isolated, dangerous areas where they are at a massive risk of violence and completely cut off from frontline outreach teams.
Zero Structural Change: A housing and healthcare emergency cannot be policed away. Until there is a massive, systemic investment in permanent council housing, mental health services, and genuine addiction support, changing the name of the law changes nothing on the streets.
Starmer’s lacklustre legacy cannot be built on the backs of the homeless community. Poverty demands solidarity, compassion, and homes—not a modernised police state.
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