“The theatre crowd have long gone, the streets are thinning out, and at this late hour the only place still open in Victoria is McDonald’s. It is packed yet on closer inspection doing little business.

Wesley nurses the remnants of a cup of tea, Josef, a south Londoner, toys with a vial of sugar, and Carla, a Spanish woman, shifts from foot to foot.

It is 10 minutes to midnight and the three of them, like almost everyone else in this late-night outlet, are huddled here for cover, part of the rough-sleeping community of Victoria.

At midnight, a cashier strides through shouting: “Time to leave, we are closed.” A few dozen people shuffle towards the door, dragging a pitiful assortment of holdalls containing their worldly possessions, and fan out across Westminster Cathedral Piazza to find a piece of pavement to sleep on.

Tonight I am to join them.

I am here because of this newspaper’s commitment to record the lives of London‘s poor. There is perhaps no greater example of the Dispossessed than the 2,226 people who, according to Homeless Link, slept rough for the first time in London last year.

The latest figures show not only that their numbers are on the increase, but an 80 per cent rise in homeless women in the last seven years and an average age of death that has fallen to a shockingly premature 42 years.

Last week, the Big Issue Foundation organised a “big sleep out” to raise awareness of how tough life is for rough sleepers and to mark its 20th anniversary. But I have chosen this corner of the capital because if Westminster council has its way, rough sleepers will soon be given an especially hard time in this part of London.

Conservative-led Westminster has launched a consultation exercise to pass a bylaw by October that will ban outdoor soup runs (as opposed to indoor soup kitchens). Those who defy the ban, says the council, will be moved on by police.

Italian celebrity chef Aldo Zilli, once homeless himself, has vowed to campaign to “save the soup runs”, and homelessness charities have been up in arms. Centrepoint, of which Prince William is patron, called the move “unhelpful”, while Broadway homelessness services boss Howard Sinclair says the bans are “heartless”.

Westminster argues that the soup runs – by four charities from outside the borough – attract up to 150 rough sleepers who are “frequently loud and intimidating to residents”. But their attempt to cleanse the area is seen as the thin edge of the wedge because it comes as homelessness services citywide face deep cuts.

Some councils, like Southwark, are cutting services by up to 50 per cent. Of the 44,000 homeless hostel beds in England, it is estimated that a quarter will disappear this year, forcing more and more people into desperate straits.

But in Victoria, the rough sleepers I meet are too busy trying to survive the night to worry about what will happen in five months. What is it like to sleep rough? Why are they here?

“I have been on the street three years and it doesn’t get any easier,” says Wesley, 47, an unemployed plasterer and father of two. “It started when my wife met somebody and we got divorced. I lost my home and came to London from up north in search of a job. Things went wrong and I ended up homeless.

I have two teenage children, but my wife only allows me to see them at Christmas.”

Where does he sleep? “I don’t,” he says. “I walk the West End. I eat a bag of nuts and a sandwich from the soup run to give me energy and I keep moving to keep warm until McDonald’s re-opens at 5am. I used to sleep in a hostel but I had my door kicked in one night and I was burgled. I feel safer on the streets.”

I head for Victoria Street – which bisects the putative “no-sleep zone” – and walk toward Parliament. At this hour, the most visible inhabitants of the city are those without a home.

Almost every shop front is taken. A man lies under several sleeping bags outside the brightly lit entrance to House of Fraser.
Two people lie outside NatWest, another has bedded down outside My Dentist, and two more occupy the pavement up against Ryman stationers.

A man replenishing stocks at Ryman pointsto a sleeping shape and says: “That guy has eight cardboard boxes and takes 30 minutes to arrange them before he climbs inside. He’s about 21 but he looks much older. Normally there is a young lady, about 40, who sleeps here as well. It breaks my heart to see women on the street. Maybe she’ll be along later.”

I settle down against a pillar outside House of Fraser, but the wind off the Thames hunts me down until I can stand the chill no longer. I walk past the covered open-sided corridors alongside the Cathedral Piazza, where knots of rough sleepers already occupy the corners, and make a bee-line for the station.

Victoria concourse at 3.30am is lit-up but deserted, as bracing as the street but without the wind-chill. There is just one train scheduled and four inebriated women are the only sign of life among the dozing rough sleepers. People slump against the windows of WH Smith and Lush, while others sleep upright using their bags as ballast on benches in the concourse. I find an alcove outside Ladbrokes to grab some rest.

A man with a white beard ambles by wheeling his belongings. His name is Jim, he is 50 and well-spoken. He has been homeless for three weeks after being evicted from his rental flat.

“For the first two weeks I went to a hostel, but they’re not for normal people. I am a carpenter by trade, I am educated. Now I am reduced to wandering the night. It’s harder than I thought. I’ve got blisters. I took painkillers but they make me hallucinate. I worry about waking up with my throat cut.”

I speak to a couple of homeless men from Romania and an Irish woman bristling with shame. There is a sense of the tragicomic competitiveness of the street in the tiff between two homeless people. “You think you’re old-school! I was f***ing 14 when I started sleeping on the streets,” the one man shouts. “F**k off you muppet,” his friend yells back, “I’ve been here since I was 12!”

These are fragile, complicated lives, some blighted by mental illness. The hopelessness they feel as they roam the streets, night after night, must be unbearable.

At this hour, the contribution of initiatives like the Big Issue becomes apparent. Co-founder John Bird pioneered the concept that a homeless person should participate in their own transformation. “We changed the homeless sector because we understood that treating homeless people as needy prolonged their neediness,” he says.

In the same vein, the Dispossessed Fund has given grants to groups like the Aspire Foundation, which runs courses for homeless people teaching them “how to start their own business”, and we have supported the Sikh Welfare Awareness Team who help rough sleepers bedding down in rat-infested rubbish-bin rooms in Southall housing estates. But no one is under any illusion that this problem is easy to fix.

By 4.30am I am too weary to focus. At 5am, when McDonald’s re-opens for business, I am the first through the door, looking for warmth and sustenance. I ask if they have anything for a homeless person and the cashier offers me a free cup of tea. I slump over the steaming cup like a man in a trance.

When I look up the entire cast from the night before is back, among them Carla the Spanish woman, Josef from south London, and Wesley, the soft-spoken Geordie. “I’m not even tired,” insists Wesley defiantly, who has been roaming the streets for hours and now stirs his free cup of hot tea.

But his bloodshot eyes tell a different story. Within minutes, chin on chest, Wesley has dropped off, snoring softly.”