A CHARITY has criticised the First Minister for turning down a series of invites to witness the scale of the homeless problem in Scotland.

Glasgow-based Homeless Project Scotland, which was started back in 2018, has been calling on Nicola Sturgeon to visit their soup kitchen to witness issues over life on the streets - but have been concerned their offers have never been taken up.

The charity provides support to the city’s rough sleepers and tries to accommodate them off of the streets.

Its soup kitchen also feeds upwards of 600 people with more than 1,000 hot meals a week under the ‘Heilanmans Umbrella’ on Argyle Street three nights a week, bringing a lifeline to those who are homeless, vulnerable, children, families, and elderly.

The charity last made its last call to the Nicola last month after founders Colin McInnes and Fraser Riddell travelled to 10 Downing Street to receive The Prime Minister's UK Points of Light Award, which recognises outstanding individual volunteers and people who are making a change in their community.

The charity has gone public with frustration over a "myriad" of unanswered invitations to both Nicola Sturgeon and Susan Aitken, the leader of Glasgow City Council.

The charity has been seeking proper recognition by the Scottish Government and wants MSPs to see how much of an issue homelessness is in Glasgow.

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It says they have invited the First Minister to witness what they do numerous times but have always been reportedly rebuffed as she is "too busy."

Homeless Project Scotland has taken to social media to air their concerns saying: "We have invited Nicola Sturgeon to visit our soup kitchen several times but unfortunately we have had a response from her private deputy private secretary saying her diary is too busy, "Why can you not come see the suffering in Glasgow, who queue up for food every night 200+ ????"

Some 256 homeless people died in 2020 in Scotland, a near 20% annual rise - with more than half of the fatalities drug-related.

Official data produced by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) reveal a death toll during the pandemic that was higher than was first thought by homeless-support charities.

There were 40 more deaths of homeless people in 2020 compared to 2019.

And some 59% of homeless deaths in Scotland (59%) were drug-related, the figures suggest.

Eight per cent of deaths were due to circulatory diseases such as heart disease and stroke and five per cent due to cancers. There were no deaths where the underlying cause was COVID-19 Two months ago concerns were raised that Glasgow City Council had cut evening meals to hundreds of homeless people after creating secret Covid deals worth £1.6m Ms Aitken had been accused of "hypocrisy" over the cuts after she made a pre-council elections attack on the UK government for cutting the £20 Covid Universal Credit uplift and "plunging may thousands of Glasgow families into hardship.

The Covid deal was set up with Well-Fed (Scotland), a "private" community interest company based in Glasgow with an aim to "alleviate food poverty and social isolation".

The council initially said no savings had been made by removing the "vital" meals to up to 600 homeless people in temporary accommodation.

But it emerged that the council had to pay out £520,309 to Well-Fed for the provision of meals to homeless residents in accommodation in 2020/21 and a further £1.134m in 2021/22.

When lockdown began in March, 2020 hundreds of rough sleepers were brought in off the streets to help slow the spread of coronavirus.

With temporary accommodation full, many were placed in hotels. But campaigners raised concerns that that B&B's and hotels were not fit to deal with people in crisis and that consequently homeless people were losing out on access to drug and alcohol addiction services and mental health care.

The Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council have been approached for comment.