London businesses begin installing metal studs to keep the homeless away

Metal studs installed to stop homeless people from sleeping outside private flats in London have been described as "brutal" by a homelessness charity. Residents at the block on Southwark Bridge Road said they appeared a few weeks ago after someone had been sleeping rough there. In reaction, Howard Sinclair, Chief Executive of St Mungo's Broadway, said: "Each year our teams, in Southwark and elsewhere, help thousands of people off the streets. "Part of their role is to prevent people adopting a street lifestyle which, on occasions, means adapting the physical environment to prevent people sleeping rough in a particular location on a regular basis. These 'studs' appear a rather brutal way of doing just that."