CAMPAIGNERS were meeting yesterday to discuss the next step in a bid to solve the problem of the borough's rough sleepers.

Councillors, council staff and volunteers from Bury Unemployed Workers Centre and other groups scoured the streets of the borough last week in a bid to find out how big a problem rough sleeping is in the area.

"We found a dozen people actually sleeping rough, and evidence of a further nine," said Mr Josh Walsh, organiser at the Unemployed Workers Centre.

"That may not sound like a lot, but the experts say it is a high count, especially for a borough as small as Bury."

The evidence was collected in the overnight survey which started last Thursday evening and covered the whole borough, although most of the evidence came from the Bury or Radcliffe areas.

The findings show that Bury has a problem, and yesterday's meeting of the Bury Single Homelessness Forum was discussing how to use the evidence.

"There are bigger areas with fewer people sleeping rough that do get cash from the Government," Mr Walsh said. "The figures we recorded do not just show there are 12 people sleeping rough, but there are at least 12 people sleeping rough in the area."

He said lack of local knowledge had also hampered attempts to make the survey more comprehensive.

"Because we are based in Bury town centre and have most of our contacts in Bury and Radcliffe, we were more successful in those areas," he said. "We don't have too much dealings with Prestwich and Whitefield, and Ramsbottom, with its rural character, does present other problems."

Mrs Sarah McCarthy, Bury Council's housing and community care manager, agreed the figure uncovered by the survey was high

"We still have much to do," she said. "We will be talking at the meeting about what to do next now we have these figures."

The hope is that a bid for cash help to deal with the problem of rough sleeping can be put together using the figures from the survey. However, much more information will be needed, such as details on facilities for the homeless in the area.

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