Inside the Deliveroo shanty town: People urinating in the street, drug use and terrified locals… we visit the tent encampment under a graffiti-covered bridge home to delivery drivers
A Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered a makeshift encampment of around a dozen homeless delivery riders, mostly Sudanese migrants, living under a graffiti-covered railway bridge in Shoreditch, east London. The site, littered with rubbish and lacking running water or toilets, has left nearby residents unnerved, while the discovery raises questions about how riders without verified right-to-work status are able to secure jobs with firms such as Deliveroo and Gopuff despite stated document checks.
Reporters who visited the site over two consecutive days found tents, bicycles and turquoise Deliveroo satchels, with occupants cooking on a stove and storing belongings in a chest of drawers. A local resident, Emma O'Donnell, 42, described feeling frightened walking past the camp. The report notes that similar camps are emerging elsewhere in London, and cites figures showing more than one in ten couriers checked during a police immigration crackdown, Operation Equalise, were found working illegally last summer — 151 arrests from 1,482 checks, with at least 17 people deported. Deliveroo's website states that riders undergo document and criminal record checks before joining.
- Homeless delivery riders, mostly Sudanese migrants, camp under a Shoreditch railway bridge.
- Residents alarmed by squalid conditions, lack of sanitation and drug use.
- Raises questions over right-to-work checks; 151 riders arrested in police crackdown last summer.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Those emphasising the need for tougher enforcement argue that the rule of law matters: right-to-work checks exist precisely to prevent exploitation and to ensure a fair, orderly labour market, and platforms like Deliveroo have a duty to verify who is actually working under their brand rather than relying on self-declared documents that can be rented, shared or forged. They point out that local residents, like Emma O'Donnell, have a legitimate claim to safety and dignity in their own neighbourhood, and that unregulated encampments with no sanitation pose genuine public health and safety concerns. From this view, robust checks and enforcement action such as Operation Equalise protect both vulnerable workers from being underpaid or coerced by account-renters, and communities from the visible strain of unmanaged informal settlements.
The case against
Those more sympathetic to the migrants living under the bridge argue that people driven to sleep rough while working gruelling hours are victims of a broken system rather than its architects, often trapped by exploitative account-renting arrangements, delayed asylum decisions, or destitution that leaves them with few alternatives to survive. They would stress that the same investigation shows most riders pass through official-looking checks, suggesting the deeper failure lies with platform verification systems and the wider asylum and housing safety net, not with desperate individuals trying to earn a living. On this view, focusing on the personal shortcomings or supposed criminality of a dozen homeless men under a bridge risks scapegoating the most powerless people in the chain, when compassion and systemic reform – proper accommodation, faster asylum processing, and genuine corporate accountability – would better address both public concern and human need.