One night with Homeless Project Scotland on the streets of Glasgow

Part of the charity Homeless Project Scotland, the group is not short of work - in a very narrow time span they speak to half a dozen people tucked into familiar spots in doorways, at bus shelters and on pavements.

"Have you got somewhere to sleep?" volunteer Mags asks each, reaching for a flask of hot water to make tea, coffee or hot chocolate.

Mags is normally staffing the Homeless Project Scotland soup kitchen under Glasgow's Hielanman's Umbrella where her nickname is the French Toast Queen for her exemplary skills with eggy bread.

The team of five - including three teenage volunteers, Mags and Ed - come across a young woman on Queen Street, sitting on flattened cardboard boxes to insulate her from the pavement's chill.

She'd like coffee but no one remembered to pack the milk so Mags runs to Tesco to buy some while the others make her a Pot Noodle and Ed checks if there's anything she needs.

The charity will organise a bed for the night and has a well stocked store of toiletries and other essentials it can share.

Quickly they move to a young man, who the woman has asked them to check on, and give him hot food and hot drinks.

A check shows George Square is unusually empty but around Central Station the streets are busy.

Another young woman tells the team she has a two-year-old baby at home so Mags hustles her up and takes her back to base where she'll be given supplies of nappies and baby toiletries.

A man in a doorway, bedded down with his dog, says no thank you to the offer of a space in a shelter - there are ample drugs in homeless accommodation and he's determined to steer clear.

"You get to know the regulars," Mags, who's volunteered for six months, says. "You need to have a good set of eyes and ears on you and just listen to people.

"You don't realise how much you're helping people so it's good when you see someone come back to tell you that, after help, they're doing better now."

Mags has personal experience of homelessness and she wants to give back, a common refrain from the volunteers at the charity.

Ed, who works for the NHS, brings his 17-year-old son Euan to give him a sense of "how privileged he is" and the importance of helping others.

Euan, who readily pitches in, says: "It's quite shocking but you kind of expect it, though it's very sad to see what we see."

The Homeless Project Scotland soup kitchen, which marks its third anniversary this month, has quickly become a fixture of the nighttime streetscape from its base at the back of Glasgow Central Station.

Earlier in the evening more teams of volunteers have been setting up trestle tables of hot food under the Hielanman's Umbrella - everything from meatballs and macaroni cheese to pies and curry from the Gurdwara.

It is a strikingly slick organisation - everyone knows what they're doing and when to ensure swelling numbers of people, nearly 200 on the night The Herald visits, are fed as efficiently as possible.

It is also a far cry from its beginnings in October 2019 when friends Colin McInnes and Fraser Riddell took a flask of coffee and packet of Bourbons around doorways.

Now, Colin says, they have a waiting list of 1800 people looking to volunteer and in 2021, during the pandemic, they served one million meals across Scotland from Hawick to Aberdeen.

Colin was moved to take to the streets after reconnecting with his estranged sister, who had told him about rough sleeping in London.

"For me," Colin says, "We all take for granted being in our house with the heating on and plenty of food and we moan that the telly's not good tonight.

"We moan while there are people on the streets freezing.

"And that's a fact. It doesn't matter how the government dresses it up and makes it look nice, it is a fact.

"Every year we're preparing ourselves to find someone dead in a doorway."

While that, mercifully, has not yet happened, Colin tells some horrific stories.

One night a man asked Colin and the volunteers to take a look at his foot as it felt numb.

"When he took his shoe and sock off his toes were black and they fell off," Colin said. On another occasion he witnessed a man in a wheelchair with both legs amputated shift out of the chair to bed down in a doorway.

At the soup kitchen, young children are a routine sight. One night, Colin added, he watched a child of three so hungry that she scoffed down a bowl of macaroni cheese and almost immediately regurgitated the food.

At the moment the charity is under the Umbrella but it wants to be brought under a roof.

Network Rail gave Colin and Fraser the use of the current premises for free but now, Colin says, "the building is coming in around us" as the rooms are so stocked with donations.

He is in a back-and-forth with Glasgow City Council over securing a building in which to open a 24/7 support hub where people could come for food, practical help or just to sit and socialise.

This is a point of contention. The council, which would not routinely provide premises for charities, says it has offered two spaces for Homeless Project Scotland.

A spokesman for the council said: "We will continue to work with the charity as far as possible, but it must stressed we have a limited number of properties at our disposal in central Glasgow suitable for the project’s purposes."

Ever resourceful, Colin has his eye on a building near to the current base and he plans to doorstep the owner to ask for support - and it would be a bold soul to tell him no.

There are at least four soup kitchens in that area of Glasgow's city centre but Homeless Project Scotland is the busiest and by far the most visible.

This week the charity also launched a 24 hour helpline - on 0800 999 2477 - staffed round the clock by a team of 20 volunteers.

Colin said: "When someone phones we will stay with that person until their head is on a pillow.

"If the local authority will not put their head on a pillow then we will.

"Last week a council had said they couldn't accommodate a gentleman so we put them in the Radisson Blu with breakfast and billed the local authority £224 for that."

A majority of the people who visit the soup kitchen are living in homeless accommodation while many are rough sleepers.

But the demographic has been shifting over the past few months as the cost of living crisis bites and an increasing number are people in work.

Volunteer Jo, who has taken over the French toast while Mags is out at the street team, said: "I've noticed we now have men in suits coming and joining the queue, they look like they're coming straight from the office.

"But they just keep their heads down, they don't engage, it's as though they're ashamed to make eye contact."

Although the soup kitchen opens at 8.30pm a queue begins to form before 7pm and at the front is James.

James first went to prison as a teenager. Now 48, he is marking five years on the outside - the longest straight stretch since boyhood.

Without the soup kitchen, he says, he would likely be back inside as he'd be forced to turn to illegal means to make ends meet.

In jail, he'd have a bed and three meals a day but it's not what he wants, he wants to enjoy his freedom.

His mother died on Christmas Eve last year and with the loss of his mum, James also lost his home.

The council has accommodated him in a new flat but so far he has little in the way of fixtures and fittings but his aim is to make the place cosy and homely, building up what he can.

"I'm still waiting for my tramp grant, they call it, but I'd like to make it snug as a bug," he says. 

Homeless Project Scotland also helps with these sorts of issues and, while James is speaking, on the other side of the road a group of volunteers are loading a three piece suite into a van to be taken to the flat of someone with nothing.

Also in the queue is a mother with a baby in a pram and another with two little girls who are clearly regulars, they know the drill and head to their favourite food stands.

James looks at the children and expresses sadness at the fact there's no shock at seeing them there.

He says he'll let them go first to make sure they get what they need before the hot food runs out.

After the hot food is finished, donations of sandwiches and any leftovers are displayed on tables for anyone to come and collect.

A steady stream of people appear and head to the tables where they fill carrier bags with food.

One man approaches and asked multiple questions about the charity before leaving and returning.

He is keen to stress that he is in work and tells a story about neighbours who are in need of food.

When it's suggested that he might like to take some sandwiches to give to them, he readily fills a bag, saying repeatedly that the food is not for him.

The night has been busy but calm - which is not always the case.

Colin shows CCTV footage of a volunteer being assaulted on one evening, but this is mitigated by a security company that offers its services for free.

Total Control Security has so far donated £47,000 worth of man hours to Homeless Project Scotland, having security guards out every night the soup kitchen is on.

The leftovers attract a group of regulars who come for company and conversation as much as the food and Colin knows them all, their names and their stories.

One volunteer is piling up donuts ready for donation.

"Of course we shouldn't be here but I'm not sure how to fix things," she says, "I want to help people who need help now being fed and warm.

"The rest is for the politicians to sort out while we bridge the gaps."