A POLITICAL row has broken out over rough sleepers in part of the district.

Shipley MP Philip Davies has urged the Government to team up with Bradford Council to help out rough sleepers in Shipley.

The Conservative politician also said the local authority’s focus should be on affordable housing in and around Bradford city centre, rather than more expensive homes on greenbelt land.

But Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, leader of Labour-led Bradford Council, has accused Mr Davies of “wilfully misrepresenting” the issue.

Mr Davies, speaking in the Commons during Communities and Local Government Questions, said: “There has been a notable increase in the number of rough sleepers in Shipley over the year or so.

“Can the Government set out what it is doing with Bradford Council to try and deal with that issue?

“In order to help homeless people it is important the Council develop new housing in cheaper affordable areas in Bradford and not concentrate on building unaffordable housing on the greenbelt in Wharfedale in my constituency.”

But Cllr Hinchcliffe said: “Rising homelessness is a shocking indictment of the age we live in and to suggest it’s all about building housing in poor areas is to wilfully misrepresent the whole issue. It’s not always just about not having a place to live. All the services that help support people with those needs have been cut by Philip’s own Government.

“The motivation for Philip Davies’s question is clear – it’s an argument about where houses are built.

“He is trying to paint a picture that lots of his constituency is being built on when the facts directly contradict this.

“The housing numbers planned for Bradford are predominantly in the urban and inner city areas of the district with only a small percentage of the greenbelt needed to meet those figures, which were approved by the Government’s own inspector. The truth is there have been more than ten times as many homes built in the city centre over the last six years than in Wharfedale.”

Residents and shoppers in Shipley and Saltaire were last year urged by the area’s Green Party councillors not to give money to beggars on the street in a crackdown on homelessness and drug use.