PENSIONERS are among a worrying rise in rough sleepers in Tottenham Court Road, a public meeting heard.

The event at the American Church was called urgently following a sudden rise in people living in tents in the last year.

The meeting heard about the need for better public awareness about the difference between anti-social behaviour and rough sleeping.

“We feed somewhere between 200 and 240 people a day,” Alex Brown, director of the soup kitchen which operates out of the American Church six days a week, told the meeting. “Traditionally our numbers have been 70 per cent rough sleepers, 30 per cent people who are struggling to feed themselves. But now our numbers are about 50-50.

“What we’ve seen specifically in the last two years or so is more and more people coming in who are pension age. It’s especially difficult when you see someone with a walker or a freedom pass around their neck. It should never, ever, happen at all.”

There are concerns the encampments could be forcibly removed by police and street cleaning teams, as they were earlier this year from outside University College London Hospital.

The meeting heard that the latest data from March showed that a third of rough sleepers in the area were new to the streets.

Mario Demetriou from the developer Lazari said it spends “hundreds of thousands” a year on remedial works and enforcement companies like My Local Bobby to deal with “anti-social behaviour” from people experiencing homelessness.

But he said “all we’re doing is just shifting the problem further down the road”, and called for longer term solutions.

Mick Atkinson from the Fitzrovia Partnership said that a “formal report from a special arborist” has been done on a large plane tree by the American Church.

The report said the tents and pallets at the base of the tree are “restricting rainfall”. He also claimed that people living in tents were “urinating and defecating” on the tree, which was killing it.

Resident Tony Travers suggested the need for more services in the area to help rough sleepers including building public toilets and showers.

Michael O’Grady, who is the lead police officer on homelessness in Camden, and who was also present at the eviction of rough sleepers from Huntley Street last year, said: “Unfortunately, we are going to have issues with drugs. That’s unfortunately where society is at the moment.

“Some of these clients have been through lots of trauma in their life. And unfortunately a lot of my colleagues – and I might be dissing some of my colleagues – have got a very negative view of the street population, which is unfair.”

David Kaner, chair of the safer neighbourhood board, said: “Don’t assume if somebody looks homeless and is causing anti-social behaviour that it’s homeless people causing the problem.

“There are plenty of people we see out on the streets who don’t cause trouble to anybody at all. So don’t condemn everybody because of a few.”