Homeless magazine out on the streets

The magazine office in Queen's Road, Brighton, will shut its doors to rough sleepers for the last time on Saturday night.

One member of staff will be made redundant and operations will instead be run from the back of a van.

Organisers of the magazine said they could no longer afford the office rent.

A Big Issue office has been operating in Brighton since the early Nineties.

John Bird, one of its founders and now editor-in-chief, spent years living hand-to-mouth on the city's streets before setting up the magazine.

Chris Jones, manager, said: "The office is a meeting place and it will be a loss for the homeless of Brighton.

"I'll be sad to see it go. It has been great for the homeless people who are in and out of here all day.

"We advise them and put them in touch with the right people but now we may lose that contact."

The Big Issue Foundation lost almost £75,000 when Brighton and Hove City Council accused it of increasing the number of rough sleepers and withdrew its grant last April.

Councillors said the charity, which employed two people to provide support and training, was having "an adverse effect" on the homeless in the city.

The grant represented a major source of The Big Issue's income and, when it was axed, the foundation itself had to close.

Now the magazine office will follow, replaced by a mobile operation used to deliver magazines to vendors across Sussex.

Mr Jones, who will manage the van, visiting day centres and hostels, said: "When they lost the funding the rent for this big building was left to us.

"Higher management have had to look for ways of saving money and, unfortunately, closing the office is it."

But homeless people said losing the popular meeting place could leave them floundering in an increasingly desperate situation.

Martin Shambrook, 55, has been homeless for four years since he suffered a mental breakdown and has been selling The Big Issue at the top of North Laine for the last year-and-a-half.

He said: "Over the last couple of weeks there has been no co-ordinator on St James' Street between 10am and 6pm so I couldn't buy any issues.

"There was nothing to sell so there was nothing to eat and I have nowhere to live.

"The homeless situation is so bad now that people are sleeping on the pebbles on the beach and all over the city. I think there are about 140 to 150 of us.

"We don't get any help anywhere. The soup run doesn't always come and if it does it is just a coffee and a sandwich.

"We won't even know where the van will be, we will have to chase it all around Brighton, they won't come to us and I don't have a phone.

"I don't know what's going to happen now.

"I think there should be a Brighton Issue where we can write about the homeless issue because we have been really struggling. I am on my last cents."

Mark Brennan, regional circulation manager, said the Brighton operation will follow the route taken by other Big Issue schemes by going mobile, allowing it to reach homeless people outside of the city.

With fewer resources available to the organisation and rents in the town so high, he said it had little option.

One of the last two employees of the Brighton Big Issue team, Jenny Daly, will be made redundant on Saturday.

She said: "I worry about the vendors a lot because many of them come in and get one magazine at a time so they will have a problem.

"I worry about them more than myself to tell you the truth, obviously they're vulnerable."

A council spokesman said: "Our commitment to tackling homelessness is absolute and we've been very successful at it.

"The debate is about the best way of doing that and there are legitimate views on both sides as to whether the Big Issue helps or not.

"But our focus is on preventing homelessness and looking after local people as a first priority. With a shortage of money for councils The Big Issue can't always rely on local authority support wherever it chooses to work."