'Anti-homeless' spikes outside Southwark flats covered over

"In Southwark, and across London, there are vulnerable people sleeping rough. As a council we are doing our part by working with St Mungo's and purchasing a third supported hostel to house single homeless people. The services are there, and the challenge is to help people who are sleeping rough to access them. While spikes may stop someone sleeping outside your home, it does not help someone off the streets – so I would urge people who see rough sleeping to get in touch with the many services out there to help."

Tesco had tried to distract from the issues here now they have been forced to back down. Thousands of people have made their feelings known online and this should be a message to any other company thinking of using anti-homeless spikes.

The campaign to remove all the anti-homeless spikes from everywhere they have been put in continues. We don't want to live in a society where public space is covered in spikes. Homeless people are not pigeons.

Instead of leaving people homeless they should be housed in one of the 700,000 homes currently lying empty in Britain. Homeless people need homes not spikes.

Each year our teams, in Southwark and elsewhere, help thousands of people off the streets.

Part of their role is to prevent people adopting a street lifestyle which, on occasions, means adapting the physical environment to prevent people sleeping rough in a particular location on a regular basis.

These 'studs' appear a rather brutal way of doing just that.

However to undertake such measures without providing the necessary assistance to people who sleep rough is wrong - the aim is to help people move in, not just move on.