The Connection at St Martin’s supports people sleeping rough in Westminster, helping them to recover and find their way off the streets towards a place to call home.

Our work is needed now more than ever.

Over 10,000 people were recorded as sleeping rough in London last year, a 21% increase on the year before. This rise is reflected in our own figures, with a 23% increase in people coming through our doors in 2023 compared to 2022.

At the same time, costs are increasing which means that providing our essential services is becoming more and more expensive.

We are therefore making some changes to ensure we’re making the most of our resources and delivering the best possible service for everyone we support.

We have decided to focus our attention on those experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage with longer histories of rough sleeping. We believe working intensively with these people is the best way to maximise our impact and make the biggest difference to rough sleeping in Westminster.

To achieve this, we have made the following changes:

A more focused eligibility criteria:

To use our service, you must be aged 18 – 70, rough sleeping in Westminster and not accessing or currently able to access support from any other services.

When people come to us who do not meet our eligibility criteria, staff will help them identify an alternative service that can support them.

Changes to our opening hours:

We will be open for general drop-in services between 9am-1.30pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

After 1.30pm on these days will be open for pre-arranged appointments and structured groups and activities.

On Wednesday mornings we will continue to provide our women-only space and the prescribing clinic will continue to run in the afternoon as usual.

Changes to our service teams:

Our new service offer will have 3 different tiers of support based on need and resources available:

This will include catering, showers and laundry and access to specialist health, substance use and other essential in-reach provision, such as our regulated Immigration advice service. This team will also manage our Severe Weather Emergency Protocol bed spaces during the winter months.

This will include all core services and access to our recovery and opportunities service to receive employment support and attend groups and activities.