Tesco is to remove an area of spikes from outside one of its stores after activists claimed they were "anti-homeless", it said yesterday.
The supermarket said the "studs" on a ledge outside the Metro convenience store in Regent Street in central London were installed to deter anti-social behaviour like drinking, which intimidated customers.
But with a protest group threatening to demonstrate outside the store, Tesco said it would remove them to address concerns of those who "interpreted them as an anti-homeless measure".
Left Unity called for Tesco to remove the spikes from all stores where they are in place. Spokeswoman Bianca Todd said: "The campaign to remove all the anti-homeless spikes from everywhere they have been put in continues. Homeless people are not pigeons."
A Tesco spokesman said: "Customers told us they were intimidated by anti-social behaviour outside our Regent Street store and we put studs in place to try and stop it.These studs have caused concern for some who have interpreted them as an anti-homeless measure so we have decided to remove them to address this."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article