Julie Redmond: Drug addicts sleeping rough on our streets should not be accepted as normal

Julie Redmond is a former nurse and Conservative candidate for Westminster City Council and the London Assembly. She has seen firsthand the impact of mental ill-health, addiction and homelessness in Westminster, both on the frontline of nursing and through her work as a community campaigner.

Step off the Tube in central London and the reality hits you. How often do we emerge onto the pavement and see a tent pitched against railings, or someone clearly in the grip of addiction, dealing, or injecting in plain sight? In Vincent Square, Pimlico and many other Westminster wards, residents regularly report open drug use and associated anti-social behaviour spilling into our residential streets, and in some cases in close proximity to our children’s nurseries and schools. Alongside petty theft, shoplifting and intimidation, the daily erosion of public order.

Westminster Conservatives will not accept this as the new normal.

The current response to tackling these issues is fragmented. The council funds public health. The NHS commissions treatment. The police enforce the law. Probation manages prison release. Charities conduct outreach. The system as a whole lacks integration. The result is a revolving door: too often mental health challenges lead to addiction, addiction leads to prison, prison leads to the street, the street leads to reoffending and round again.

It is time for a more serious and structured response.

I am proposing a Westminster Street Recovery & Public Safety Plan centred on the creation of a 50-bed Recovery and Stabilisation Centre, a true Centre of Excellence for mental health stabilisation, drug recovery, and structured street transition.

This would not be a simple shelter. It would be a controlled, clinically led facility with four clear pathways.

First, individuals leaving prison particularly high-risk or repeat offenders, would be transferred directly into short-term stabilisation, linked to probation supervision and structured recovery plans. No more release with a travel warrant and nowhere to go.

Second, hospital discharge patients with addiction or homelessness risk would move straight into supported stabilisation beds. No discharge back to the street.

Third, individuals arrested for possession or anti-social behaviour linked to drug misuse could be diverted into mandatory engagement at the centre as part of a conditional caution. Treatment with consequences. Refusal to engage would mean prosecution proceeds.

Fourth, those with severe mental health needs and dual diagnosis would receive rapid psychiatric assessment and, where required, referral under the Mental Health Act.

This model is not theoretical. Finland has shown that a properly funded, integrated Housing First strategy can dramatically reduce rough sleeping by combining permanent accommodation with wraparound support. Switzerland, after facing an escalation in open drug use in Zurich in the 1990s, combined firm policing with medically supervised treatment and heroin-assisted therapy. Open drug markets were dismantled. Overdose deaths fell. Public order was restored. It’s a shame that Sadiq Khan has not chosen to learn from these approaches during his decade as Mayor of London.

The common thread was clarity and integration. Approaches did not oscillate between leniency and crackdowns. They built capacity, aligned agencies and made long-term commitments.  London struggles because we have not done the same. Treatment beds have declined. Mental health services are stretched. Housing shortages undermine recovery. And enforcement without pathways simply has people travelling round the destructive circle.

The cost of 50-bed stabilisation centre would be modest in comparison to the combined costs of policing our troubled communities, imprisoning addicts, A&E admissions, and emergency accommodation. Funding could come from a blend of council public health budgets, NHS Integrated Care Board contributions, Ministry of Justice support for prison-release cases and targeted Home Office grants.

The principles are straightforward: compassion with enforcement; treatment with accountability; structured recovery pathways; public safety restored.  Westminster has the visibility, the resources and the responsibility to lead and should not tolerate open drug addiction and street disorder any longer.

Safer streets and structured recovery are not opposing goals. They are the same goal. Compassionate Conservatism in action.