The Prebend Centre shuts at the end of 1 October and Bedford Borough Council takes over rough sleeper services. Night beds become self-contained rooms.

The SMART Prebend Centre on Prebend Street will close at the end of Thursday 1 October. The charity that runs it, SMART CJS, announced the closure on 11 August. Bedford Borough Council confirmed three days later that it is taking the borough’s rough sleeper services in house, and said the charity ceases its operations on 2 October.

Most of the charity’s staff are moving across to the council. The council says outreach, welfare and night bed services all continue. The day centre does not.

What is changing

From the two announcements, the changes are:

  • the Prebend Centre day service on Prebend Street closes at the end of Thursday 1 October
  • rough sleeper outreach, welfare and night bed services transfer to Bedford Borough Council
  • night beds are being remodelled from overnight camp beds in a hall into self-contained rooms with their own cooking and washing facilities
  • most SMART staff transfer to the council, so the people currently using the service should see familiar faces
  • SMART is helping people move onto the council’s redesigned pathway before its final day

The council frames the remodelled night beds as an improvement rather than a reduction. Its statement says the rooms give people “safe and warm spaces to stay during the day, with their own cooking and washing facilities”. (Bedford Borough Council, 14 August 2026)

Neither statement puts a number on how many night bed spaces there will be, or where they will be. Neither says what replaces the daytime drop-in.

What the Prebend Centre currently does

The centre at 12 Prebend Street opens Monday to Friday, 9am to 2pm. Its own description of the service lists:

  • hot lunches and emergency food packs
  • showers, toiletries and clean clothing
  • phone and postal services for people with no fixed address
  • advocacy, signposting and one-to-one support with housing, benefits and health
  • partner-led health and wellbeing clinics
  • specialist advice on substance use and debt management

That daytime drop-in is the part with no direct replacement named in either announcement. (SMART CJS, The Prebend Centre)

Why it is closing

SMART is blunt about the reason. “Securing the long term funding needed to sustain it has become increasingly difficult, particularly as local funding priorities have changed,” its statement says.

The charity also placed Bedford in a national pattern. “We have watched day centres across the country close and felt the pain of those charities. It is deeply upsetting to now find ourselves in the same position.” (SMART CJS, 11 August 2026)

Louise Ritchie, chief executive of SMART, said she has confidence in the changes and that they will mean continuity of services for the homeless community in Bedford.

Councillor Andrea Spice, the council’s portfolio holder for economic prosperity, planning, housing and regulatory services, said the borough’s homelessness service “has not changed substantively over the last ten years”. She said the council and SMART had worked in partnership for a decade.

The government’s National Plan to End Homelessness, published on 11 December 2025, pushes councils towards early intervention and prevention. Both statements point to it as the reason for the redesign.

The demand the new service inherits

Neither announcement carries a figure for how many people are affected. The official statistics do.

The government counts rough sleeping on a single night each autumn. In autumn 2025 it recorded 23 people sleeping rough in Bedford borough, up from 14 a year earlier. That is a rise of about two thirds in twelve months, against a rise of under 3 per cent across England, where the count went from 4,667 to 4,793.

Bar chart of people counted sleeping rough in Bedford borough in the autumn snapshot: 30 in 2019, 6 in 2020, 2 in 2021, 2 in 2022, 18 in 2023, 14 in 2024 and 23 in 2025
Bedford's autumn rough sleeping count collapsed during the pandemic years and has climbed since 2023. Source: MHCLG rough sleeping snapshot, autumn 2025.

A snapshot is a single-night count, so it is a floor rather than a full-year total. It is still the only measure collected the same way in every council area.

The larger pressure is temporary accommodation, and those figures were published five days ago. At 31 March 2026 Bedford had 932 households in temporary accommodation. That is 11.6 households per thousand in the borough, against 5.5 per thousand across England. Bedford’s rate is more than double the national one.

Inside that total:

  • 424 of the 932 households had children, and 857 children were living in temporary accommodation
  • 792 households were in nightly paid, privately managed self-contained accommodation, the most expensive type councils use
  • 83 households were in bed and breakfast accommodation, of which one had children
  • 42 households were in council or housing association stock

The bed and breakfast figures have moved sharply in the right direction. A year earlier, at 31 March 2025, Bedford had 118 households in B&Bs and eight of them had children. Ending the unlawful use of B&Bs for families is one of the three pledges in the national plan.

The overall total barely moved: 919 households in temporary accommodation in March 2025, 932 in March 2026. Children in temporary accommodation rose from 821 to 857.

In the first three months of 2026 the council carried out 383 initial homelessness assessments. It owed a duty in 382 of them. Of those, 256 households were already homeless and 126 were threatened with homelessness within 56 days. Forty one of the prevention cases followed a valid section 21 notice from a private landlord. (MHCLG, statutory homelessness detailed local authority data, January to March 2026, published 13 August 2026)

What it means for you

If you use the Prebend Centre, the practical date is Thursday 1 October. SMART says it will give everyone using the centre clear information and help them move onto the council’s pathway before then. The centre is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 2pm, on 01234 365955 until it closes.

If you are worried about someone sleeping rough in the borough, the route is StreetLink, on 0300 500 0914 or at streetlink.org.uk. Alerts made through StreetLink go to the council’s rough sleeper outreach team in Bedford, which is the service that continues after October. (Bedford Borough Council, rough sleepers)

If you are homeless now or at risk of losing your home, go to the council directly rather than waiting for the transition to finish. The council’s homelessness and temporary accommodation pages cover what to do today, what to do if you are worried about becoming homeless, and domestic abuse. A section 21 notice is a common trigger locally, and the figures above show why acting on the notice rather than the eviction date matters.

If you donate to or volunteer at the centre, the charity has asked supporters to stay with it through the transition. The council also points people to the Bedford Homeless Partnership for the wider list of local services.

Anyone tracking why housing pressure in the borough keeps rising can read our page on Bedford house prices, which sets out what homes actually sell for here and how fast that has moved.

Sources