Walk through Worthing town centre during the daytime and the message is one of renewal.

Millions of pounds are being spent on new paving, planting, seating and public spaces. Montague Place is becoming Montague Gardens. New signs encourage visitors to explore the town’s shops, restaurants and cultural attractions.

But return after dark and another version of Worthing can emerge.

Benches become beds. Doorways become shelters. Small alleyways provide cover for drinking and suspected drug use. Familiar figures move between the pedestrianised streets, supermarkets and late-night shops.

For some residents, particularly those walking alone, the atmosphere can become uncomfortable or intimidating. For town-centre workers, it is not merely something witnessed on the journey home. It can mean verbal abuse, repeated theft and the anxiety of never knowing whether challenging somebody will lead to aggression.

The question is no longer whether Worthing has services for homelessness. It plainly does.

The question is why the same visible problems appear to return night after night — and why a town spending millions improving its physical appearance still seems unable to regain control of some of its most prominent public spaces.

The official figures tell only part of the story

According to Adur & Worthing Councils’ annual snapshot, an estimated seven people were sleeping rough in Worthing in November 2025, with three physically recorded during the count.

That was a significant reduction from an estimated 17 in 2024 and 31 in 2022. The council says rough sleeping across Adur and Worthing has more than halved, helped by the opening of new supported accommodation.

Those numbers are encouraging — but they require context.

The annual figure is a snapshot of one particular night, supplemented by information from agencies. It is not a continuous headcount of everyone found sleeping in the town during the year. It also does not include every person who is homeless, sofa-surfing, intermittently housed or spending their evenings on the street before sleeping elsewhere.

Most importantly, seven people gathered repeatedly within a compact shopping centre can be extremely visible.

Residents do not experience homelessness as a spreadsheet covering the entire borough. They experience it through the person sleeping on a familiar bench, the group gathered near a doorway, the shouting heard from an alley or the same individual repeatedly entering local shops.

That is why the official improvement and the public perception can both be genuine.

Worthing may have reduced the total number of verified rough sleepers while still having a persistent and highly visible town-centre street population.

Homelessness and criminality are not the same thing

It is important to be precise.

Not every homeless person steals. Not every person with an addiction is aggressive. Not every shoplifter is homeless. Many people sleeping rough are more likely to become victims of violence and exploitation than perpetrators of it.

But it is equally unhelpful to pretend there is never any overlap between entrenched rough sleeping, addiction, antisocial behaviour and acquisitive crime.

Adur & Worthing Councils’ own outreach service works with Sussex Police, probation, health services and charities. Its stated responsibilities include managing risks connected with crime and antisocial behaviour, while supporting people with complex needs, including drug and alcohol dependency.

Turning Tides also operates specialist accommodation and recovery services in Worthing, including support for people experiencing homelessness alongside addiction, trauma and serious mental or physical health difficulties.

Recognising those connections is not an attack on homeless people. It is necessary if Worthing is serious about breaking the cycle.

Compassion without boundaries can leave vulnerable people deteriorating publicly. Enforcement without treatment merely moves them from a shop doorway to a police cell and eventually back again.

Worthing currently appears trapped between the two.

The shoplifting problem is real

The concerns of local businesses are not based solely on town-centre gossip.

In April 2026, Sussex Police said the average number of recorded shoplifting offences in Worthing town centre had fallen from 47 per month in March 2024–February 2025 to 28 per month during the following 12 months.

Police attributed the reduction to improved retailer reporting, targeted patrols, Operation Apprentice and efforts to identify prolific repeat offenders.

Yet the court cases continue to demonstrate how much harm can be caused by a relatively small number of people.

One Worthing offender convicted in May 2026 admitted 22 new thefts and 15 breaches of a Criminal Behaviour Order. Police said he had accumulated more than 60 theft convictions since the beginning of 2025. He was banned from numerous retailers and from entering the Guildbourne Centre.

Other recent Sussex Police cases have involved offenders of no fixed address repeatedly targeting supermarkets and other retailers, sometimes despite existing bans, suspended sentences or extensive criminal histories.

A national newspaper investigation published in April reported Worthing shop workers describing a core group of around 20 repeat offenders, with some stores allegedly experiencing dozens of incidents on particularly bad days. Charity shop staff also described theft becoming an almost daily occurrence. These were claims from interviewed workers rather than official daily police totals, but they demonstrate the level of frustration among people working behind the counters.

Police say the overall trend is improving.

Businesses can reasonably respond that even a falling number remains damaging when the offences are concentrated among recognisable repeat offenders who return again and again.

Crime statistics show a town centre under pressure

During June 2026, the Worthing Central policing area recorded 97 violence and sexual offences, 91 incidents of antisocial behaviour, 44 public-order offences and 36 shoplifting offences.

There were 335 recorded crimes in total that month, almost identical to the 337 recorded during May. These were the two highest monthly totals shown for the preceding year on the local policing page.

Those figures cannot be attributed to homeless people, and it would be irresponsible to do so.

They do, however, confirm that concerns about safety, public behaviour and theft exist within a wider picture of substantial town-centre demand on the police.

The council itself states that alcohol-fuelled antisocial behaviour has increasingly affected Worthing town centre, with a significant impact on businesses and residents. Public Space Protection Orders provide powers relating to public drinking and unauthorised overnight camping.

Yet published council figures raise questions about how consistently those powers are being used.

The council recorded 183 Worthing antisocial-behaviour reports during 2025/26, up from 141 the previous year. However, its published PSPO table records no reports under its public-drinking or overnight-camping categories during that period, and no PSPO fixed penalties. The council cautions that some enforcement carried out by Sussex Police is not included within its figures.

Even with that qualification, residents may reasonably ask whether the available powers are producing a visible difference on the streets.

Worthing is spending heavily — and doing some things well

This is not a story about a council doing nothing.

Skywaves House opened in 2025 with 21 self-contained flats and round-the-clock support for people with a local connection who had experienced homelessness and complex needs. The project brings together the council, Turning Tides, Worthing Homes and Homes England.

The council also operates an outreach team and works alongside health professionals, substance-misuse services, probation and local charities. People sleeping rough can access food, showers, medical care, housing advice and recovery support through local services.

But the scale of the wider housing emergency is immense.

In the first nine months of the 2025/26 financial year, 541 local households approached the council for advice because they were at risk of becoming homeless. Worthing Borough Council expected to spend more than 30 per cent of its entire annual budget assisting residents who would otherwise have nowhere to live.

The hidden homeless families placed in temporary accommodation are not generally the people causing unease in town-centre alleyways.

That difference matters.

Worthing is dealing with at least two connected but distinct crises: a severe shortage of affordable housing affecting ordinary households, and a smaller, more entrenched group of people whose homelessness may be combined with addiction, offending, mental illness and repeated disengagement from support.

A general homelessness strategy will not necessarily solve the second problem unless it combines housing with persistent treatment, supervision and consequences for behaviour that harms others.

The town should not have to choose between compassion and safety

The usual debate quickly divides into two camps.

One side demands that people be removed from benches, doorways and shopping streets.

The other warns that enforcement criminalises poverty and merely pushes vulnerable people somewhere less visible.

Both arguments contain truth. Neither offers a complete solution.

A person should not be punished simply for having nowhere to sleep.

But homelessness cannot become an automatic exemption from the standards expected of everybody else. Open drug use, threatening conduct, persistent theft, aggressive begging and the intimidation of shop workers are not made harmless by the personal circumstances of the person responsible.

Likewise, repeatedly arresting somebody for minor theft, releasing them and waiting for the next offence is not a strategy. It is an expensive revolving door that fails the victim, the town and the offender.

Worthing needs a more assertive combination of outreach and enforcement: named caseworkers for the most entrenched individuals, rapid access to addiction and mental-health treatment, supported accommodation, consistent action against repeat offending and an obvious night-time presence in the locations where problems recur.

Businesses should not be expected to act as unpaid security officers or social workers.

Residents should not be told that what they repeatedly see is contradicted by an annual snapshot.

And vulnerable people should not be left visibly deteriorating in public until their next arrest, hospital admission or crisis.

A beautiful town cannot simply look away after dark

Worthing is working hard to reinvent its centre.

New gardens, better lighting, attractive seating and public events can all help rebuild confidence and footfall. But physical regeneration is only half the job.

A newly landscaped square will not remain welcoming if families avoid it, traders feel unprotected or its benches become permanent overnight accommodation.

The most uncomfortable truth is that a relatively small number of individuals can have an enormous effect on how an entire town centre feels.

That does not make them less human. It does mean the problem cannot be dismissed as prejudice, exaggerated perception or something residents must quietly learn to tolerate.

Worthing has shown it can move people off the streets. Skywaves House and the reduction in the official count are genuine achievements.

The next challenge is harder: dealing with the familiar cases for whom an offer of accommodation alone has not ended the cycle of street life, addiction, disorder and offending.

Worthing should be compassionate.

It should also be safe.

The people sleeping on its benches deserve something better than abandonment — and the people walking past them deserve something better than being told there is no problem.