YORK’S Lord Mayor Ian Gillies has attended a fair few functions over the last year.

But it’s fair to say not many of them will have involved swapping tales about life on the streets with homeless people over a bacon sarnie.

His neat dark suit, tie and mayoral chain of office might have looked a little out of place when he turned up for breakfast at the Arc Light centre in Union Terrace, York.

But he was completely at home: sitting at a Formica-topped table and discussing how tough it was to find a job if you don’t have a home to call your own.

“Are there many places that will take you on if you’re homeless?” he asked the three Arc Light residents sharing his table. There were shakes of the head.

“Mention where you are, and they are like... oh,” said 55-year-old Ged.

The Lord Mayor was forthright in his opinions about street beggars. There were genuinely homeless people who really needed help, he said. “But seeing people begging on the street with a dog... that gives a bad name to homelessness.”

“Saw one the other week,” agreed Ged, a former construction site steel worker who has been at Arc Light since just after Christmas. “He had a brand new pair of boots.”

Cllr Gillies was sympathetic about the impact homelessness has on family life.

“You’ve got a grandbairn?” he asked Ged, revealing his Scottish background.

Ged nodded. “She’s three. She’s always asking me if she can come and stay at my house.”

Cllr Gillies and his wife Pat, the Lady Mayoress, were at Arc Light at the invitation of chief executive Jeremy Jones.

A few years ago, Mr Jones was a guest speaker at a Lord Mayor’s breakfast at the Mansion House – and thought it would be good to return the invitation.

“Rather than him having the great and the good of the city, this was a chance for him to meet some of the most important citizens,” said Mr Jones.

Cllr Gillies, whose daughter Cathie is an Arc Light trustee, said he’d learned a lot from the people he met.

As a councillor, he was used to getting reports.

“But speaking to people who are actually homeless gives me a far better idea of what Arc Light does for them, and what they’ve got to do for themselves,” he said.

And what did the Arc Light residents themselvesmake of the Lord Mayor?

“He’s all right,” said Ged. “I’m not keen on the Tories, but it is good that he came here.”

The breakfast coincided with the end of Arc Light’s severe weather measures, in which extra camp beds were set up in the hostel’s quiet room over winter.

But Mr Jones stressed nobody would be going back out onto the street.

“We will be able to accommodate the people we have got at the moment,” he said.