These activists are putting parking tickets on homeless tents to make an important point

A new grassroots campaign is giving tents and sleeping bags on the streets mock parking tickets in a bid to convince the government to axe the Vagrancy Act for good.

The two-century-old act has been criminalising rough sleeping and begging since the Napoleonic Wars and was removed from the statute book through the Tories’ controversial anti-protest bill: the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.

But the legislation still remains in force in England and Wales until it is replaced despite being repealed in 2022 and has slipped off the legislative agenda after being omitted from Labour’s own Crime and Policing Bill.

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Now a new “guerilla-style” campaign called Humans Parked Illegally has launched to finally axe the act for good. Max Tyler and Alfie Hardman spent seven years working in advertising agencies before statistics around the Vagrancy Act turned them on to the issue.

“It’s a criminally outdated law and one that must change now. Our focus was: How can we actually wake up the public to it? I think they would be as outraged as I was to learn about it, that this 201-year-old law is still in place,” Hardman told Big Issue.

“We were just thinking throughout a lot of what we do, what we can do to provoke a reaction and get people thinking. We came up with this concept for a campaign with Humans Parked Illegally. We want to take an issue that pisses off a lot of people living in the UK on a daily basis and give it a different meaning, creating shock, awareness and real-life change.”

They first started putting fake fines on sleeping bags and tents placed around central London in early March.

The pair started placing the installations around parts of London, including outside parliament in the hope of shock tactics will inspire people to call for the act to go.

Each ‘fine’ features a QR code urging people to sign a petition to scrap the Vagrancy Act.

“We want to really lean into what these fines actually look like and mimic them as much as we can,” said Tyler, who admitted he used his mother’s printer to create the fines in a bid to get the grassroots campaign off the ground.

The pair plan to follow up the street installations with an exhibition at the London Art Exchange in Soho at the end of May.

They hope that their work can finally see the back of a law that was originally brought in to deal with soldiers on the streets after the Napoleonic Wars.

“I just passed veterans on the streets and it’s like we’re still here, we’re still talking about exactly the same people,” said Hardman.

“We call them rough sleepers but they are people first, they are people sleeping rough at no choice of their own.”

What is happening with the Vagrancy Act?

It’s unclear when the Vagrancy Act will finally not be in force in England and Wales.

It was back in February 2021 when then-housing secretary Robert Jenrick announced that the Vagrancy Act would be scrapped following years of campaigning from frontline homelessness charities.

The act means people can face criminal action for sleeping rough in a public place and can even see people face fines of £1,000.

The Vagrancy Act was repealed the following year and the government consulted on what should replace the powers for police. Homelessness charities have argued that police already have sufficient powers to deal with anti-social behaviour connected to homelessness through the likes of community protection notices and public space protection orders.

But the Tories pressed on with a replacement under their controversial Criminal Justice Bill, which attracted criticism for including a clause allowing authorities to take action over “excessive smells”.

While the Tory bill failed to pass before the party was booted out of power, the Vagrancy Act is not mentioned in Labour’s Crime and Policing Bill.

At a parliamentary debate last month, MPs asked the government why there were delays to scrapping the Vagrancy Act for good.

“Could the policing minister, either by intervening now, or in her winding-up speech, tell the House what the government’s plans are around repealing the 1824 Act – or not – and around nuisance begging?” said shadow home secretary Chris Philp.

In response, policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said: “We all agree that rough sleeping and nuisance begging are complex issues.

“We are working closely with the deputy prime minister and her department to ensure that such individuals, who are often vulnerable, are appropriately supported – that is set against our commitment to stand by the police and effectively tackle crime and antisocial behaviour. 

“As it stands, the Vagrancy Act 1824 remains in force, and we know that police forces in many areas also use the ASB powers to tackle the antisocial behaviour associated with begging and rough sleeping.”

Figures released last year by the Liberal Democrats show that a total of 2,947 people have been charged with an offence under the Vagrancy Act which reached a first hearing at a magistrates court in England and Wales since 2021.

Overall, the use of the powers has declined in recent years with 1,350 offences in 2021, down to 885 in 2022 and 712 in 2023.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International UK found 17 of 43 police forces chose not to use the act in the last year at all.

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