Soup Kitchen Cater To Well-Heeled

For decades they have been an invaluable source of nutrition for London's homeless. But now, mobile soup kitchens are attracting new customers, those who are not poor and needy but just too lazy to cook.

More than 80 per cent of the people using the British capital's soup kitchens, which also hand out food such as sandwiches, are in fact not homeless, The Times newspaper has reported.

Research by Westminster Council, whose remit covers much of the city centre, said that the 65 mobile soup kitchens were increasingly being seen as a free, convenient catering service.

On a recent survey of outlets, council researchers heard of one man who was saving money to buy a football season ticket and regularly took sandwiches home to his apartment to eat in front of the television.

"People come out of hostels and flats because it's free and it saves cooking," one user of a soup kitchen on The Strand, a central London street, told the survey.

Westminster Council is to discuss the findings next week, the report said. According to the paper, the council views the number of free food services, run by a variety of charities, many of them religious, as excessive, meaning homeless people are discouraged from leaving the streets.