Labour calls for council chief who ordered royal wedding crackdown on homeless to be sacked
2 min read
A Conservative council leader who ordered police to crackdown on homelessness in Windsor ahead of the royal wedding should be sacked from a key housing role, Labour has said.
Simon Dudley, the head of Windsor and Maidenhead council, called on police to clear the town of rough sleepers in preparation for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's nuptials in May.
The local authority chief said the policy would deal with “an epidemic of rough sleeping and vagrancy” in Windsor that was putting “a beautiful town in a sadly unfavourable light”.
He has since been slapped down by Theresa May, who said she did not agree with his comments.
Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey said Mr Dudley should now be dismissed from his role on the board of the Homes and Communities Agency, a public body with responsibility for homelessness.
He said: "The comments made by Councillor Simon Dudley are entirely inappropriate. The Communities Secretary, Sajid Javid, should remove Simon Dudley from this position and replace him with someone who is prepared to help tackle the scandal of rising rough sleeping."
Neil Coyle, the Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, who is co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness, said: “He should do the right thing and step down.”
Mr Dudley set out his plan in a letter to Thames Valley Police in which he called for the 1824 Vagrancy Act and the 2014 Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act to be used against rough sleepers and people asking for money on the streets.
The police force has since distanced itself from policy, however, saying it doesn’t consider legal action to be an effective tool in tackling homelessness.
Speaking during a visit to a hospital yesterday, Mrs May said: "I think it is important that councils work hard to ensure that they are providing accommodation for those people who are homeless, and where there are issues of people who are aggressively begging on the streets then it’s important that councils work with the police to deal with that aggressive begging.”
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