Most common call out for city wardens is rough sleepers

Ted Peskett Local Democracy Reporter

Rough sleepers in shop doorways is one of the most common call-outs Cardiff city centre wardens are having to deal with at the moment, according to a council official.

The latest figures given to us by Cardiff Council on homelessness show that there are currently 25 recorded rough sleepers in the city.

This is slightly higher than the figure for the first two weeks of 2025/26 (21) and about the same as this time last year.

However, it is nearly half of the figure for the midway period through 2024/25 (48).

Speaking at a recent Cardiff Council economy and culture scrutiny committee meeting, city centre warden manager Dave Sultana said: “The most common issue my team deal with on a daily basis is rough sleepers in doorways preventing businesses from trading.

“We do an early morning sweep, which is… 8am. It is basically a… wake up call, so we are waking everyone up in the best manner we can.

“We have been approached today by South Wales Police.

“They want to get one of their officers on this early morning sweep with us because part of the engagement does occasionally lead to anti-social behavioural referrals from my team and the police have picked up on the amount that they have gone up.”

The number of rough sleepers recorded by Cardiff Council was highest in week 23 of the 2024/25 period (55).

A graph comparing the number of rough sleepers in Cardiff during 2023/24 with the figures for 2024/25 shows that there is an increase at the beginning each year.

The number of rough sleepers then begins to fall after the summer. This drop happened later in 2023/24 compared with 2024/25.

During 2023/24, the number of rough sleepers in Cardiff reached its highest point (50) three times. This happened one week in October, one week in November and one week in December.

Rough sleepers in the city centre needing support is one of a number of pressures that Cardiff Council faces in relation to homelessness and housing.

Another Cardiff Council scrutiny committee was told this month that the number of households on the council housing waiting list had grown to more than 9,600.

In November, 2021, the number of households registered on the waiting list was 7,700.

Cardiff Council said in its corporate strategy for 2025-2028 that it would expand the scale and pace of its council house building programme.

The council has recently embarked on a new partnership programme with Vale of Glamorgan Council and developer Lovell Partnerships on a scheme that will deliver at least 2,260 new homes across the region over the next 10 years.

In a statement published in March, 2025, the local authority also said it had delivered 1,819 new homes of all tenures as part of its housebuilding programme.

Of these, 1,461 are council homes and 358 are homes for sale.

A further 422 homes are currently being being built across 12 sites and “hundreds more [are] in the pipeline”.