People sleeping rough

Tower Hamlets Council works with a range of partners including homelessness charities, specialist substance misuse, mental health organisations, and community groups to ensure people who are rough sleeping are provided with appropriate support, and an offer of a route off the streets. 

Our outreach team will have made contact with anyone who is regularly on the street in Tower Hamlets and carried out an initial assessment and offered support.

This support includes:

Street Outreach Response Team, currently run by St Mungo’s that goes out at night and early in the morning looking for people rough sleeping and providing them with support.

A Day Centre, currently run by Providence Row, that provides a warm, safe place where people can get a hot drink, breakfast and lunch, a shower as well as access to the internet and phone charging facilities.

Dellow Centre
82 Wentworth Street,
London, E1 7SA
Open Monday-Friday, 9.30am-2pm
Tel: 020 7422 6752

Addressing complex needs: This includes specialist support to tackle drink and drug addictions, and mental health issues.

Additional winter shelter: When the temperature reaches 0C or below, London’s Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) is activated. We work quickly to ensure all people sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets, whatever their circumstances, are provided with emergency accommodation.

Preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place is a large part of our work. You can read more about this in our Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy.

Our key partners

We work with the following charities and organisations to support rough sleepers

Providence Row – a local charity that support people affected by homelessness in East London.

St Mungo’s – a local charity that has been on the frontline of homelessness for 55 years.

Thames Reach – a pan-London service, which we are part of that runs the rapid response service that follow up Streetlink referrals seven nights a week.

Crisis - we have close links with this national charity, which has the Skylight Centre in Commercial street and provides the Crisis at Christmas scheme.

If you are concerned about someone sleeping rough

You can refer someone who is sleeping rough to StreetLink. This sends an alert to the local outreach team who will visit the location to make contact with the person. If you any immediate concerns for their health call 999 and request an ambulance.

If you are homeless

You can use our Housing Options Finder to find out what help there is available.

You can also search for local hostels and shelters. 

Other information

Homeless Link has a page of research which shows what is happening on the ground, and identifies what is working and what isn’t when it comes to tackling homelessness.

National charities, Shelter and Centrepoint also have a lot of information and guidance.