Burnham makes pledge to end rough sleeping in first speech as prime minister

Andy Burnham has made ending rough sleeping in the country his first policy pledge as the new prime minister.

Making his first speech in Downing Street, Burnham said he wanted the government to be “investing in people’s success rather than paying for failure”.

The government said an additional £340m will be provided to support the policy, which is expected to provide 1,200 homes and “intensive support” for at least 3,000 people in England over a five-year period.

When he became Greater Manchester mayor in 2017, Burnham pledged to end rough sleeping in the area by 2020. Figures published in 2025 showed rough sleeping had increased year-on-year, although decreased compared to 2017.

The government said the first steps will involve helping those sleeping rough for a long period of time to move into secure housing, and includes the “acquisition of suitable homes”.

Burnham, in a statement after his first speech outside 10 Downing Street, said: “On my first day as prime minister, I’m announcing this government’s commitment to finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK at the earliest opportunity.

“We’ll get to work immediately, bringing together national and local government with the investment needed to get it done.”

The latest annual national statistics, published by the government in February this year, estimated there were 4,793 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025 in England.

This was a new record high and the fourth annual increase in a row.

The number of people seen sleeping rough on a single night in Greater Manchester was recorded as 268 in 2017, 149 in 2023 and 154 in autumn 2024, according to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

The Manchester Mill reported that the figure had increased to 197 in 2025.

Conservative shadow housing secretary James Cleverly wrote on X: “Burnham’s rough sleeping pledge looking pretty shaky.

“His record in Manchester showed initial success, then failure once his focus shifted.”

The Bed Every Night scheme which Burnham set up, and donated 15% of his salary to, now provides more than 600 beds a night for people who might otherwise be on the streets.

The city region’s also pioneered the government’s Housing First scheme, based on a Finnish model and the principle that the security of a good home is a fundamental foundation for life.

But as mayor, Burnham argued issues out of his control exacerbated the problem with the underlying housing shortage, cost-of-living pressures and refugees being evicted from hotels meaning the numbers have remained high.

Burnham visited homelessness charity The Passage in Victoria, London, hours before he made his first speech in Downing Street.

Challenged about his record, Burnham said the “problem was down significantly” from when he first became mayor of Greater Manchester.

He told broadcasters: “We ran a scheme every night, 600 beds, called ‘A Bed Every Night’ and we funded it through various different ways. But we were the only place that was doing it.

“And you won’t be able to get the numbers down if you’re the only place and other cities, people are coming to Manchester.

“So it taught me that the only way is to do this together.”

Burnham referenced the Everyone In scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic, when thousands of rough sleepers across England were helped with housing.

He said: “Everybody pulling in the same direction, everyone in, as we did in the pandemic, because we did bring people inside in the pandemic.

“And that’s what I’m saying as I go into government today.”

Burnham’s pledge echoes one made by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who committed to providing 8,000 homes “immediately” to house people with a history of rough sleeping in the event of the party winning power.

Crisis chief executive Matt Downie said it was “absolutely fantastic” to see Burnham’s pledge, adding it signalled a shift away from “simply managing homelessness, which costs billions to the public purse”.

He said: “Rough sleeping is a moral stain on our country; a normalised emergency born out of years of chronic underinvestment in support services and a failure to build new social homes at anywhere close to the scale required.

“Andy Burnham now has the potential to rewrite the norms on tackling homelessness and end rough sleeping once and for all.”

The £340m programme announced by Burnham follows the government of former PM Sir Keir Starmer publishing a national plan to end homelessness in December. This was backed by £3.6bn.