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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Aine Fox

Rough sleeping to be decriminalised as 200-year-old law scrapped in ‘landmark moment’

Rough sleepers will no longer be criminalised with the repeal of the Vagrancy Act - (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A 200-year-old law criminalising rough sleepers is to be scrapped in what has been hailed as a “landmark moment”.

The Vagrancy Act, introduced in 1824, was designed to punish “idle and disorderly persons, and rogues and vagabonds, in England”.

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