A weekly newspaper splashed on its patch’s homelessness problem after a journalist found two rough sleepers outside its office.

Head of content Nic Brunetti discovered the pair outside the Slough Observer’s building on Thursday, the paper’s deadline day, and decided to interview them after carrying stories on the issue in recent editions.

Nic found out the duo had been outside the Windsor Road premises all night, indicating that rough sleepers were moving further out of the town due to an increasing volume of homeless people in its centre.

Nic interviewed the pair before passing their quotes to reporter Krishan Davis, who followed the story up by speaking to the main homeless charity to get the latest statistics, as well as church leaders.

A health-related splash was removed from the front just before deadline to make way for the piece.

The Observer is now asking readers to let them know about other locations where they have seen rough sleepers to raise further awareness of the issue.

Nic told HTFP: “The story was literally staring me in the face and I couldn’t have had a clear conscience all morning if we hadn’t taken the opportunity, even on deadline day.

“It’s easy to dismiss as a freak one-off but there is a genuine homeless problem in the town which we had put on the agenda just months before.

“Everyone was telling us not enough was being done and for the size of the town, rough sleeping numbers were high and going up. The advertising department were worried about what the guys might do but they were actually fairly friendly.”