Professor Green condemns 'anti-homeless' benches

Professor Green has condemned the decision to fit bars to benches in Bournemouth to prevent homeless people sleeping on them.

The musician told ITV News that the design would "aid the further victimisation of the most vulnerable people in our society".

Bournemouth Council said the benches were introduced in response to "numerous complaints" about people lying on them during the day.

It added that it had provided 150 hostel beds for homeless people.

The redesign has caused widespread outrage since local artist Stuart Semple posted a photograph of one of the benches in the town, calling it a "hostile design".

Professor Green was among those to share the image, telling his followers: "What’s the message here? ‘Hey you poor sods with no safety net - you better really hope life doesn’t throw any **** at you now! And god forbid you make a bad life decision!

"Cause you won’t have the ‘comfort’ of this bench to sleep on! Ha!’. Again, nothing done to tackle the problem, just something to make it more invisible so we can pretend it isn’t happening."

Green later told ITV News: "We have a government who don’t care about the poor or less privileged - they repeatedly aid the further victimisation of the most vulnerable people in our society".

Homeless charity Crisis said: “The use of hostile architecture and other anti-homeless measures is a sad indictment of how we treat the most vulnerable people in our society."