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What Vagrancy Act?

August 01 2026

Deputy editor Mat Amp responds to the repeal of the Vagrancy Act, with additional reporting by members of the Pavement

In a nutshell

  • On Monday 29 June, the Vagrancy Act was repealed by the government
  • Successive governments had promised to get rid of the Georgian-era act, first 
    introduced in 1824
  • The law criminalised homelessness and was regularly used up to its repeal
  • Legislation, such as the Crime and Policing Act of 2026, continues to punish people experiencing homelessness.


The Vagrancy Act was passed in 1824 to deal with the burgeoning number of homeless troops returning from the war in France. By anyone’s standards that is cold.

Then all of a sudden, on a Monday morning in late June, the Georgian-era legislation was finally repealed.

For over 200 years the bill criminalised homelessness, arming authorities with powers to move on, fine and even arrest people sleeping rough. Upwards of 3,800 people were arrested under the act in England and Wales from 2018 to 2022.

Apart from the punitive side of the bill, with people being fined up to a thousand quid, the act encouraged people experiencing homelessness to keep a low profile, effectively pushing them away from the services they desperately needed to survive.

Interestingly, I had an impromptu picnic yesterday with my mate Phil who sleeps in the local  park and spends his days outside a Tesco, helping shoppers with their trolleys and carrying shopping bags for change.

As we brazenly sipped our vanilla vodka, apple juice, tonic water and ice on the doorstep of one of South London’s biggest superstores, we got to talking about the Vagrancy Act. Not only was Phil unaware that it had been repealed, he didn’t know it existed in the first place.

He’s been homeless for many years, so of course he’s been aware for a long time that the police can fuck with him. Phil is a bright guy with substance use problems. He tells me he doesn’t need to know his rights, because the police do what they want anyway and I’ve got a tendency to believe him. Instead of knowing the law, he protects himself with street-smarts, instinct and know-how.

Of course, he’s had his fair share of run-ins with the police and some of the stuff he has told me is shocking in its brutality and flagrant abuse of his rights. But he has come to accept it and takes some pride in the way he deals with it all.

“Mat,” he said, “I know how to avoid ‘em, I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. This act [repealing the Vagrancy Act], whatever it is, will make no difference and the people that most need help, who are a bit unstable, will always be the ones that get grief.”

He isn’t wrong. You can take away the powers of the Vagrancy Act and make efforts to decriminalise homelessness, but there is still a raft of public order-facing legislation that gives cops the power to arrest people for next to nothing. There are people on the streets with mental health issues who will continue to run into trouble with the type of police officers who revel in escalation.  

The truly awful reality is that the type of trauma-informed training that would help officers de-escalate these confrontations is most often only received when it is mandated as a punishment for brutalising someone. It’s like forcing criminal offenders with addiction problems to go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings – it just ain’t gonna work.

All the legislation in the world is useless without the skills to apply those laws effectively. However, saying that, a decent legal framework is an essential starting point.

Speaking of, legislation is in place that will continue many of the worst aspects of the Vagrancy Act.

Dispersal orders such as Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPO) and Community Protection Notices are regularly issued by local authorities trying to remove people from public space.

The Crime and Policing Act of 2026 allows for people sleeping rough to be handed dispersal orders, prohibiting ‘spatial trespass’.

Under the 2014 Crime and Policing Act, Anti Social Behaviour Injunctions are handed to people for rough sleeping.

Meanwhile, PSPOs can often carry punitive fines of £100 which, going unpaid, can balloon to court fines of up to £1,000.

Somehow all of this makes perfect sense to the people charged with designing legislation and enforcing it.

Farewell, then, the Vagrancy Act and good riddance. But people experiencing homelessness and sleeping rough will continue to be targeted and criminalised by legislation. Maybe one day the harsher elements of the 2026 Crime and Policing Act will be replaced or done away with altogether. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another 200 years… .

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August – September 2026 : Here and now

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