A councillor has responded to a push towards restricting tents for rough sleepers by sharing how she tackled homelessness in her constituency.

Emily Darlington, the Milton Keynes City Councillor for Bletchley East and the Labour parliamentary candidate for Milton Keynes South, has hit back at the Home Secretary Suella Braverman after she proposed making it a civil offence for charities to give tents to the homeless in a bid to move them off the UK’s streets.

Ms Darlington criticised the Home Secretary’s approach to the country’s homelessness epidemic in a series of tweets written today (November 5), in which she stated: “Five years ago, Milton Keynes was dubbed ‘tent city’ by the media. Today, no one needs to sleep rough on our streets.”

She said the move to make handing out tents a civil offence would be ineffectual due to their status as “a symptom, rather than the cause” of homelessness.

Describing how she led the Milton Keynes council towards all but eradicating rough sleepers in the city, Ms Darlington wrote: “You need somewhere that people can go, so we built a shelter on the top floor of the old station.

“On the ground floor, we brought together all voluntary and statutory services so (that) everyone has a warm and safe bed for the night, and in the morning, they have access to all the services they might need, from a cuppa and a friend to a GP and mental health services.”

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She added: “This was no easy feat to get all homelessness services to work together, but it creates success.

“People who sleep rough lead chaotic lives and are very vulnerable to exploitation. They often have mental health conditions and self-medicate to survive.

“Having services under one roof means they do not fall between the gaps and are treated as a whole person. The number of people who have gone from the Old Bus Station into employment and their own place is incredible.

“Making tents a civil offence is not the way to end rough sleeping. Bringing together services both statutory and voluntary to embrace someone and help them up is the only way to success.”