A campaign has been launched to stop people giving cash to beggars.

Southend Council today launched its Make a Change campaign to help people to “live a life off the street”.

The campaign is a partnership between the council, Essex Police and homelessness charities.

It follows a summit in September to address the issues of aggressive begging, rough sleeping and antisocial behaviour which have been dogging Southend High Street.

The main aims of the campaign are to encourage people to consider donating to homelessness charities like Harp, which between 2014 and 2018, has helped to house 1,133 homeless people, instead of giving change to street beggars.

In addition, the council wants to encourage people to alert Streetlink to any rough sleepers – this sends an notification to the council who will send outreach staff to engage with them.

Tony Cox, cabinet member for adults and housing, said: “It’s often hard to walk past a person on the street without doing something. Giving change only provides immediate relief and can enable and even encourage life on the streets.

“So we are asking people to consider giving to a local homelessness charity and also alert Streetlink to any people rough sleeping. It is likely that we will already know them but you can never be too sure. Alerting Streetlink allows our outreach team to visit them and attempt to support and connect them with services.”

It comes in the face of a steep rise in the numbers of homeless people being shipped out of London boroughs to neighbouring authorities.

The campaign comes after a Guardian report revealed the number of households being moved out of London by councils because of high rents has increased dramatically. A total of 574 homeless people are said to have been moved to Essex neighbourhoods this year. Often, people are given only enough money for a couple of night’s accommodation elsewhere, after which they can become homeless once more.

Tony Cox, councillor responsible for adults and housing, said: “Housing authorities throughout Essex are seeing the impact of households being moved out of London by councils who can’t afford to find similar accommodation in the capital. This has an impact on the local housing private rented market in Southend and with local housing allowance levels currently frozen, this only exacerbates the shortfall. Any council can arrange a tenancy in the private sector outside of their boundary. We have no control over another authorities policy in this area, and whilst they are meant to inform us of any intention to house residents in our area, they do not need permission.”