THE number of people turned away from Redbridge Night Shelter through to lack of bed space has almost doubled in the past year according to its annual report.

In six months from the end of November last year to the end of May this year, the shelter in York Road, Ilford, turned away at least one homeless person on 114 out of the 190 nights it was open.

The accommodation has been upgraded with a quarter of a million pounds' worth of refurbishment work in the last year, but organisers have defended their decision to keep the shelter's capacity at 18.

Night shelter vice-chair Andrea de Berker said: "The extra space is a development of our original plan. It was a dump when we took it on, we had to do a lot of work just to make it habitable.

"We really can't accommodate more than 18 people. It is a good number in terms of having contact with the group and not being an institution."

The shelter was set up in 1994 as a joint project between churches in the borough and secured a permanent base in 2001.

Since November last year the shelter has been open year round and in the 190 days to the end of May this year it provided a total of 3,290 overnight stays to 154 individuals.

The report also details a fall in the age profile of users. The average age of users was 32 and the authors were concerned to note that there were 35 who were between 16 and 25 years old.

They wrote: "The largest group of guests are still single white males between 20 and 40 years, the majority of whom are from Redbridge.

"In terms of this group's priority for housing with the council nothing has changed and they generally tend to be low priority on the council's housing register and are left with limited options for finding solutions to their housing needs."

Of the 51 guests who spoke to the shelter's resettlement worker 34 moved on to other accommodation and Mrs de Berker said that they hoped to focus more closely on resettlement work in the coming year.