The £3 million raised through Sleep in the Park will be used to provide immediate housing for the homeless

Social Bite has pledged millions of pounds to move homeless people into their own flats.

The social enterprise has announced that the money raised from the successful Sleep in the Park event will be used to immediately house homeless people into their own accommodation.

Co-founder Josh Littlejohn announced the plans ahead of a visit to the Social Bite café in Edinburgh by Prince Harry and his fiancée Meghan Markle next week.

The £3 million raised through the sleepout will be distributed in Glasgow and Edinburgh, on a housing first basis.

Littlejohn said the initiative was recognised globally and by academics as the best solution to addressing the issue of homelessness.

“The current system is costly to society, in terms of funding the temporary accommodation and it also costs police time in terms of people being in and out of prison,” he said.

“It costs as they’re in and out of the NHS, so there’s all kinds of costs associated with the current homeless system. The homelessness sector and the academic evidence base suggest we work towards a system where the default response is when someone becomes homeless, we should rapidly rehouse them.”

The Royal couple will follow in the footsteps of George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio when they drop in at Social Bite on Tuesday (13 February).

This will be their first official visit north of the border and it will help to mark the Scottish Year of Young People 2018.