Homelessness: end of the line for the bendy-bus rough sleepers

Hundreds of homeless people travelled on London's bendy buses at night, finding a safe haven and a place to sleep. But now the buses have been withdrawn, where will they all go?

A few nights on a bus in the early hours of the morning was a revelation for Robert Wilkins, documentary-maker and director of a short, eye-opening Guardian film on the scores of homeless people who would clamber aboard London's N29 night "bendy bus" to find shelter and sleep in the early hours.

Rather than the stereotype rough sleeper - the gaunt, grizzly wino in tattered clothes - he found people who had to their surprise been tripped up by joblessness, eviction and relationship breakdown and had fallen rapidly on hard times. Some who travelled the buses every night were reluctant to even accept that they were homeless. As Wilkins says:

"They weren't like I imagined homeless people to be."

He spent several nights filming passengers on the N29 route, which wends its way from Trafalgar Square in the centre of the capital out to Enfield in its northern suburbs and back again. Up to 70 homeless passengers would board the vehicle on any one trip. Once it reached its final destination (about an hour later), they would get off, and jump on the next bus heading south.

The bendy-bus became a useful haven for rough sleepers because of its articulated design - at 18 metres it is almost twice as long as some conventional buses and allows passengers to slip on by the rear doors without having to pay the driver. With ticket inspectors rare at that time of night, travellers could find relative warmth and comfort, free of charge (although their sleep would be frequently interrupted).

But night riding will no longer be an option for most rough sleepers after tonight, when the last operational bendy-bus in London, working the 207 route from White City to Hayes in west London, makes its final trip. The vehicles have been replaced by double deckers which are less "rough sleeper friendly" as they require passengers to swipe their travel pass or pay the driver before getting on.

As Adam, an N29 bus driver, explains in Wilkins' film:

"I don't know what's going to happen when the Bendy bus goes because they won't be able to come on the bus without a valid ticket. The drivers are going to have to stop letting them on."

Where the bus-sleepers will go, no-one is quite sure. Kirsty Lowe, an outreach support worker at the Thames Reach homeless charity, which has been monitoring bendy bus homelessness as part of its Bus project for the past year says:

"I honestly cannot say where they will go. I suspect they will be rough sleeping."

Lowe says that while she knows a handful of "night riders" have acquired Oyster cards and are using the new buses, the vast majority of the hundreds who she saw on the bendy bus have gone elsewhere. She has heard reports that some are sneaking into bus depots at night and letting themselves onto buses parked there. But for the most part, she says, the rest have slipped off the charity's radar.

Thames Reach has recorded 214 homeless people on bendy buses over the past 12 months - a fraction of those thought to have practiced night riding. About a third were from middle and eastern Europe, a third from the UK and the rest immigrants - legal and illegal - from other parts of the world. The charity has helped over 60 into accommodation.

Lowe suspects many night riders were relatively new to homelessness. Many told her they chose the buses, she says, because they felt safer there than on the streets or even in a homeless hostel. She also noticed a camaraderie among many of the regulars that involved them keeping an eye out for each other.

Wilkins says the drivers varied in their attitudes to their nocturnal passengers, some of whom, inevitably, were drunk or unruly and forced them to stop or call the police for assistance. Some drivers would not stop to pick up passengers they suspected were homeless. Other were more sympathetic. As Adam, the bus driver in the film says:

"You do feel for them, because one day it could be me, it could be any one of us in that situation."

Film by Robert Wilkins - robertwilkins@me.com - music by Jack Ketch.