A church-based winter project giving shelter and food to the city’s homeless is looking at plans to open all year round.

Inn Churches has now set up a steering committee to explore the possibility of running permanently.

Its co-ordinator Juli Thompson already fears the knock-on effect of benefit cuts will have more people turning up on their doorstep over the next few years.

She said: “The next few years could see the situations faced by our guests worsening as relationships and health suffer with the impact of benefit cuts.”

Key factors resulting in people becoming homeless and turning to the project for help when it was running from December to February were financial, mental health and family breakdowns.

In that time nine churches and 350 volunteers from 68 churches across Bradford offered help through the project providing 1,426 beds.

When the project was piloted last year and tried for one month and just seven churches opened their doors to take part in the Bradford Diocese initiative – but it has grown.

Referrals to the shelters came from organisations across the city, but mainly from the Bradford Day Shelter.

Of those helped by the project, 26 moved on into permanent accommodation, eight others got houses, nine were repatriated, two have gone into rehabilitation for substance misuse, three have got jobs at London’s Olympic Village and one moved to Doncaster to work in a bank.

  • Read the full story in Monday's T&A