Prince William Yorkshire: Prince of Wales highlights Yorkshire youth project during surprise visit

Prince William visited Reach Up Youth, based at the Verdon Recreation Centre near Burngreave, during a tour yesterday afternoon.

It was the last of a series of visits he has been making as part of the launch of a five-year programme to tackle homelessness in the UK.

The visits have been spotlighting locally led work to prevent homelessness.

The Sheffield visit, to Reach Up Youth, was to show how grassroots sports can connect young people with their communities, boosting peer support to prevent homelessness.

During the visit, the Prince took part in some sporting activities before hearing from young people who have experienced homelessness.

The Prince says he hopes to end homelessness with his new Homewards project.

William went head to head with Aston Villa footballer Tyrone Mings and was given a huge cheer by members of a Sheffield community project when he was the first of them to score.

The former steel town was the final leg on a whistlestop tour of the four home nations to highlight Homewards, the prince’s ambitious five-year project to end homelessness in six locations.

Mings is an advocate for the project and spoke in recent days about how as a child he experienced a “scary” time living in emergency accommodation with his family.

Commenting on Homewards’ aim of eradicating homelessness, he said: “It’s going to be difficult, but I don’t think any of us would have joined, or Prince William himself would be doing it, if he didn’t think that was achievable.”

Speaking after the event at the headquarters of Reach Up Youth, a community project supporting young people in Sheffield, the sportsman suggested the initiative would help change society’s perceptions of the homeless. The footballer said: “I almost felt a little bit guilty with getting involved at the start because I thought, I didn’t sleep rough and I wasn’t someone that was out in the streets.

“So I didn’t want to be doing those people a disservice.

“But then learning more about homelessness, and my situation, and just how vast homelessness is, brought me under that umbrella of being homeless at that certain time.”

William has set his sights on making rough sleeping, sofa surfing and other forms of temporary accommodation a thing of the past, as he tries to emulate Finland, where the problem has been virtually eradicated, with his latest initiative.

The five-year project will initially focus on six locations where businesses, local authorities and organisations will be encouraged tojoin forces and develop “bespoke” action plans to tackle homelessness, with up to £500,000 in funding.

On Monday William announced the first three locations – Newport, South Wales, three neighbouring Dorset towns, Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch, and the south London borough of Lambeth – where his ambitious initiative will bring together several organisations to tackle homelessness.

Earlier the prince unveiled Northern Ireland as the next site by visiting Belfast, and travelled to Aberdeen before visiting Sheffield.

In Belfast the prince spoke to Grainia Long, Northern Ireland Housing Executive chief executive, who afterwards said the partnership has the potential to be “transformational”.

Ms Long said the launch comes at a time when Northern Ireland is facing unprecedented levels of demand in respect of housing and homelessness.

She said: “The discussion this morning with Prince William, members of The Royal Foundation and local partner organisations, confirmed that we share a real and a longstanding commitment to work together to improve the lives of those people who are struggling to find a place to call home.”