A small community of homeless people who sleep in tents under the colonnade of a furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road have been told they are no longer welcome to spend the night there.
For more than ten years the partly sheltered shopfront of Heal’s has been a home for those who had nowhere to go but were allowed to spend the night in front of the store so long as they were gone by 8am the following morning and took their possessions with them.
But earlier this month people camped in front of the shop were given a day’s notice of changes which mean they can no longer stay overnight, reported the Metro newspaper.
Planters were then placed in front of the shop filling the covered space and preventing people pitching tents for the night.
A spokesperson for Heal’s told the Metro: “We understand that it is a complex and sensitive issue, and we approach it with care and compassion.
“The introduction of planters is not intended to ignore this challenge, but to balance the needs of our Heal’s customers, the tenants at the Heal’s Building and the wider community.”
One homeless man who had spent years sleeping in front of Heal’s said the store and its staff had over the years shown more compassion to people sleeping rough than many others have done.
Tony Long told the Metro: “Heals gave us one day’s warning — more than other places ever have.
“But we have been here so long we have established a good relationship with them.”
The Metro reported that staff from the store and the cafe opposite had brought out hot drinks for people in the small encampment, and many others have developed a friendly relationship with the rough sleepers.
In 2018 the Camden New Journal reported that many people sleeping on the street have otherwise ordinary lives but without having a bricks and mortar home to go to at the end of their working day.
Five years later the same newspaper reported that Camden Council contractors, street wardens and the local police had removed tents from outside a hospital in Huntley Street, and published graphic images of tents being thrown into the back of a rubbish lorry.
The Fitzrovia Partnership convened a public meeting about rough sleeping on Tottenham Court Road in 2024 and made a number of broad allegations against people sleeping on the streets.
The Fitzrovia News understands that over the past year some local residents and businesses on and around Tottenham Court Road had complained directly to Heal’s for allowing people to stay in front of the store overnight, saying the sight was intimidating and that they felt threatened by the people sleeping there.
One local worker told The Fitzrovia News: “Where are they to go? They’ll just move somewhere else. It’s not their fault they are homeless. One woman who was there has been sleeping on the streets for over 15 years.”
Statistics released earlier this year stated that the number of people sleeping out in the open across England had risen to the highest number recorded since 2010.
At least 4,793 people were estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025 across England, exceeding the previous peak of 4,751 in 2017.
Across Greater London, 1,277 people were recorded sleeping out — down from the 1,318 people counted the year before.
In the City of Westminster and the London Borough of Camden, the numbers were the second highest ever recorded.
In Westminster 360 people were counted, a drop compared to 388 a year before. In Camden 134 were counted, two more than the 132 counted in 2024.
The latest quarterly figures for the London Borough of Camden and City of Westminster released by the Combined Homelessness and Information Network show a reduction in the number of people seen sleeping out in the first three months of 2026 compared with a year earlier.
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