HOMELESS people have been reduced to sleeping in communal bins in a bid to escape cold and wet nights on the streets, a committee meeting has been told.

Campaigners Love Activists told the city council's housing and new homes committee that homeless people were sleeping in bins to keep “dry and warm”.

Councillors said the prospect was “scary” and called for extra vigilance after wet and cold nights to ensure that homeless people were not injured when bins were collected in Brighton and Hove.

The warning recalls the tragic death of maths teacher and rugby coach Scott Williams who was crushed to death in a Brighton bin lorry in 2009 after falling asleep in an industrial bin after a night out.

It also comes despite moves by the city council to improve emergency provision for homeless accommodation.

The council has recently reduced the criteria for their severe weather emergency protocol to be triggered after just one day of sub-zero temperatures.

The severe weather emergency protocol is the arrangements expected of local authorities to ensure that provision exists to protect rough sleepers from sub zero temperatures and ultimately to make sure as much as possible that people do not

die while sleeping on the streets during winter

Cllr Clare Moonan, the Labour administration’s lead on homelessness, recently apologised to Love Activists that the protocol was not observed during a freezing weekend night last month.

Love Activists were addressing the meeting after submitting a petition calling for further moves to end homelessness in the city.

They told the meeting that at least 15 homeless people known to them had died in the past 12 months.

A member of Love Activists told the committee meeting: “People are getting into the wheelie bins just to get their heads down and because they are dry and warm.

“You need to look into it, you need to get us off the street.”

Cllr David Gibson, Green housing spokesman, said: “I would praise the council for bringing it to just one day of sub-zero temperatures which is great but I think we would all agree we should look at doing more.

“Talking about people sleeping in wheelie bins, that’s scary.

“We should be thinking this, especially when it’s really wet when people are most tempted to hide in a bin.”

GMB branch secretary Mark Turner said: “I have serious concerns if this is happening.

“We have two people working on communal bins for the very reason of checking them.

“I’m not getting reports from Cityclean staff that it is happening but I would not be surprised and would have concerns that commercial waste collectors might not be operating two person operations to check for this danger.

“This is something that is going to get worse with more cuts to housing support agreed at budget council.”