Rank: Forum user 
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I have an ongoing issue at one of our stores. Due to the recent change in weather, we have a vagrant sleeping in our shop doorway over night. We very rarely see him as he is gone on the morning when we open up. He is collecting bags of rubbish from other stores, opening them and generally using the contents to keep him warm. This means that my colleagues are coming in every morning to a mountain of rubbish in the doorway. This obviously means that they are having to clear it up before the store opens.
I have contacted the council trade waste department, the local environmental health dept and the police for assistance, all of whom are saying 'its not their area'!!!
We have changed our trade waste arrangements to ensure our bags are not left out over night. The doorway is also the exit for an emergency means of escape that needs to be accessed at night so we could not just put shutters up. We have issued the colleagues with PPE to protect them when cleaning up the rubbish (and completed a risk assessment).
This morning the colleagues inform me that our friend has been there over night again and that he has also used the area as a toilet. This has lead to our colleagues refusing to clean up the rubbish.
HELP!!! Does anyone have any advice as to what more we can do as I am running out of ideas?
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Can you contact the Social Services or YMCA to see if they can provide a home for this person? Otherwise, at best, you may only succeed in moving your problem into someone else's doorway. Clearly this person is in need of help if they are soiling their own 'space'
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Rank: Super forum user 
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not very pc - but have you tried hosing down the area at 'close of play'? [before he settles in]- he'll probably move somewhere drier then
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Rank: Forum user
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Similarly to M, I would take a humanitarian point of view firstly, and consider what I could do to assist this person and ensure that they had somewhere to go rather than sleeping in a doorway. Have you considered speaking to a charity for the homeless and perhaps going with one of their people to the site in question at night to try to talk to the person? It seems such a shame that this is being treated purely as a problem, and that the fact that it's a human being is being lost.
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Rank: Forum user
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I understand the humanitarian side some responses show, but if it continues and you have to do something about it, perhaps to employ a security company to carry out spot checks during the silent hours, usually this is just a mobile patrol that would probably have a few companies to visit per shift. This obviously much cheaper than static guarding and would most likely solve the issue.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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