ICY weather clearly makes people think a little harder about the rough sleepers we walk past outside shops and train stations each day in central London – as if winter cold weather is somehow tolerable to camp out in, just not if it’s sub zero.

Newsflash: it’s always horrible.

This week’s freeze saw the city’s SWEP – Serious Weather Emergency Protocol – kick in and authorities were required to provide shelter to those at risk of dying on the streets.

So it can be done! People can be brought into the warm. Similar efforts were made, if not always successfully, to get “everyone in” during the Covid lockdown. Why did the UK not harness that moment to make ending homelessness a silver lining to all of the pandemic pain?

Wouldn’t it be better to be permanently trying to achieve this, rather than acting in fits and starts, and only when the needle of a thermometer flicks one way or another.

Researching rough sleeping in our city this week, one of my reporting colleagues, Frankie Lister-Fell, was told by a homeless charity that there is an added threat in the coming days and fortnight: Namely, the World Cup – and England’s titanic clash with France tomorrow (Saturday) night.

“Sleeping out is very dangerous. Things are different when, for example, there’s a big football match on, in the same way that domestic violence increases around those times, so does violence in the street,” said Rachel Cullen, from The Simon Community. She explained. “You don’t want to be sleeping on the floor there – it’s very vulnerable, when there’s lots of really drunk people around.”

Ms Cullen went on: “People will interfere with you in some way or another, whether they’re stopping to tell you what they think of your situation or physically waking you up. So during England games, people in central London tend to put themselves out of the way a bit more and that’s quite common.”

The same goes for the high jinks in the streets as over-oiled Christmas parties spill out from the bars and clubs. Suddenly, people can feel emboldened to start poking the sleeping bags.

The sad truth is, outreach workers will find it harder and harder to trace those trying to brave out the cold, if they are hiding away from the lights.