A PRIEST at a city centre church has called for a homeless shelter to reopen following an increase in the number of people sleeping rough, with some taking refuge in his churchyard.

Father Peter Groves, vicar at St Mary Magdalen Church in Magdalen Street, said the homeless have been sleeping in the churchyard throughout the summer months.

Some have been taking shelter beneath scaffolding which was erected while a £400,000 renovation of the roof was being completed.

Fr Groves said: "A few people have turned up in recent weeks and set up makeshift shelters in the churchyard but we tell them it is not safe for them to stay.

"We offer them a cup of coffee and then refer them to the city council's homelessness team and other agencies including the Gatehouse charity.

"It's a great shame there has been a reduction in local authority funding to tackle homelessness in Oxford in recent years."

Fr Groves urged the city council to consider reopening Lucy Faithfull House, a 61-bed homeless hostel on city council-owned land in Speedwell Street, which closed in January last year after Oxfordshire County Council withdrew its annual £500,000 funding.

The vicar added: "There is a certain amount of migration and often people are trying to get somewhere else, to return to a place where they have family contacts."

Fr Groves, parish priest at the church since 2005, said the 'elephant in the room' was that rough sleepers often had a problem with alcohol or drug addiction.

He said: "Staff at Lucy Faithfull House did some fantastic work and if at all possible it should be reopened."

Church staff highlighted the issue of rough sleeping in the city centre after earlier this month police officers found drugs paraphernalia in the churchyard, including about 20 syringes.

A city council count of rough sleepers in Oxford last November said on one night there were 39.

Mike Rowley, city council board member for housing, said: "Rough sleeping is a growing challenge nationally, and the Government simply doesn’t provide enough funding.

"But here in Oxford we’re not prepared to just let the situation worsen, which is why the city council has chosen to pick up an additional, non-statutory burden in tackling rough sleeping to try to plug the gap after the county council was unable to carry on funding some support due to this tightening of the purse strings by the Government.

"The city council continues to maintain its support for services that work to prevent homelessness as well as assisting people off the streets and into accommodation.

"We have kept our budget allocation at £1.4m to keep our support at the same level for the majority of currently funded organisations."

County council spokesman Paul Smith said: "The county council is not the housing authority in Oxfordshire and does not run shelters.

"Despite this it has long been by far the largest funder of homelessness support, well beyond its legal obligations.

"Despite recent budget changes the county council remains the single biggest funder of housing related support services in 2017/18 as part of a redesign of services that was agreed with county and district councils and the NHS pooling funding."