HOMELESSNESS services in Scotland's largest city are in "crisis" according to staff, who claim they are being forced to turn desperate people away without help – despite their legal obligation to house them – because they have no accommodation to offer.

UK Government statistics released last week show a 16 per cent increase in rough sleeping across England, rising to 4,134. But although homeless applications have fallen in Scotland, case workers from Glasgow City Council's community teams told the Sunday Herald that the under-resourced service was struggling to cope and said increasing numbers were forced to sleep rough in the city.

Earlier this month Glasgow City Council raised concerns that the city-wide roll-out of Universal Credit, due by September 2018, would affect services and leave them unable to fulfill legal obligations to offer housing to everyone who is judged to be unintentionally homeless.

However staff said the service was already close to breaking point with unions warning that the added pressures were "a train crash waiting to happen".

One caseworker told the Sunday Herald: "The teams are desperately understaffed and overworked. We have a lot of repeat single males who come in day after day with no accommodation and we have no accommodation to give them. They are at their lowest ebb. It's emotionally very draining. I can't imagine how it feels for them to be rejected."

In 2015 homeless case workers staged a 17-week all-out strike demanding that their roles were upgraded in line with other frontline social work staff.

Ian Leitch of Unison said: "Our democratically elected representatives should be fighting far harder. The roll out of Universal Credit is literally a train crash for homelessness services. There is a lot of hand wringing but we need action."

However a spokesman for the council said the claims were "sharply at odds" with its understanding of the system. "Homelessness presentations, as well as repeat presentations, are in long term decline and our use of B&B has remained at consistent levels in recent years," he said.

"There is no question that welfare reform has been a challenge for our service and the introduction of Universal Credit will impact still further. But the council spends £73.5m on homelessness each year, provides accommodation for around 2000 households every night and has recently invested £12m in two thirty-bedded emergency accommodation units in the city."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: A Scottish Government spokesperson said it was working closely with Glasgow City Council, the Glasgow Homelessness Network and other third sector providers "to ensure continued improvement in homelessness services" and claimed that three as a six percent decrease in homelessness applications in the city.