SOUP runs in London are being increasingly abused by people who are not poor, needy or homeless, according to research that claims there is now one for every two rough sleepers in the capital.

Research for Westminster City Council has found that many of the capital’s 65 soup runs, which provide good quality sandwiches and hot and cold drinks, are attracting people with homes from all over London, who regard them as a convenient, free catering service.

On a recent sweep of soup runs in the capital, the council’s researchers came across one man, John, at a soup run in Victoria, who said a friend was “saving up money for a football season ticket”. John said the friend “takes the cheese sandwiches home with his mate to toast and eat while watching TV”.

Another man, Bill, who used a soup run in the Strand, said: “People come out of hostels and flats because it’s free and it saves cooking.”

More than 80 per cent of people using street runs are not rough sleepers, according to the mapping survey of soup runs carried out by the council with the police and homelessness groups. Only one organisation, the Simon Community’s Marylebone Parish Church soup run, was found to have a policy of serving only rough sleepers.

The report, which will be discussed on Monday at a conference organised by the council, is bound to reopen the fierce public debate on whether soup runs do more harm than good. The view of Westminster is that the over-provision of hand-outs in central London helps maintain a street lifestyle for people unwilling to come indoors. It also draws people out of accommodation and back into street culture.

Although the council has made several attempts in the past five years to deal with the problem by bringing support for homeless people off the street and into hostels, shelters and advice centres, it believes there is now an urgent need to revisit the issue.

While the number of soup runs has declined in the last five years in response to a fall in the number of street sleepers to between 100 and 120 a night, a number of religious charitable organisations have refused to stop their soup runs because taking care of the poor and needy is an intrinsic part of their faith.

One Hindu group told the council’s researchers: “We’ll feed taxi drivers if they want.” They explained that their soup run is authorised by their guru Sai Baba in India, who directed them to feed needy people even though he recognised the majority of soup-run users were not homeless.

The conference on Monday will discuss the findings of a report on Christian soup runs by Matthew Davenport, who has six years of experience working in the street homelessness sector in London.

Far from helping solve the problem of street homelessness, Mr Davenport, a committed Christian who is now training to be a minister in the Church of England, concluded that “misguided giving and random acts of ‘help’ can cause harm”.

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