Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced that he will donate 15% of his Prime Minister's salary to help end homelessness. The cash will come from the £83,837 additional salary he receives for serving as Prime Minister, and will go to homelessness charities and causes. It means he is expected to donate £12,575.
Mr Burnham already gives 15% of his £98,599.31 MP's salary to local causes in his Makerfield constituency. The Prime Minister, who has said he hopes to end rough sleeping entirely by Christmas, announced the new donation in an interview with Big Issue.
Leading from the Front
He told the magazine: "I wouldn't want to ask anybody to do anything that I'm not prepared to do. I want to lead from the front. This issue matters massively to me. I don't want to live in a country where walking past people sleeping rough just becomes commonplace, and we almost say: 'Well, that's it, there's nothing we can do'."
"There are things that we can do. We proved it in the pandemic. We should do it again now, and it should just be what we do all the time."
The Prime Minister said he feels "very passionately" about tackling homelessness but warned the Government could not solve the problem on its own. He visited the Alex's Place homeless facility in Newcastle, run by the charity Changing Lives, on Wednesday to announce his pledge to offer a place to stay to every rough sleeper by Christmas.
New Funding and National Summit
Mr Burnham has announced an additional £102million from uncommitted budgets within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to go towards immediate routes off the street for people this winter. This includes an £8.4million boost to the Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund, in recognition of the work of charities, faith groups and community organisations in the sector.
The £102million will go alongside £340million announced last month for new support to get long-term rough sleepers into settled accommodation over the next three years. Mr Burnham has also said he will host what is being described as a first-of-its-kind national summit this autumn to "bring together leaders from across society – from business, finance, charities, health, faith communities and more – to ask what role each of them can play in ending rough sleeping".
Record Rough Sleeping Figures
The latest annual national statistics, published by the Government in February, estimated there were 4,793 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025 in England. This was a new record and the fourth annual increase in a row. At that stage, 43% of people sleeping rough were in London and the South East.
Mr Burnham said he accepts that not every rough sleeper might take the offer "for their own reasons". He also said the millions of pounds he was announcing in funding might not be enough on its own to get the job done.
He told reporters: "The Government money may not fully get us there, and I'm saying to wider society, faith organisations, let's see if we can do this together."
"Let's see if Britain can do this. Give everybody an offer to come inside before Christmas. You know, that is just something we can do."
"We did it in the pandemic. We can do it again, and it's a rallying call, really, that I'm putting out there today with a lot of Government money behind it."
He said people being left to sleep on the streets "can often cost more to the state because people can be in and out of A&E, and in and out of hospital beds, and sometimes in contact with the police". The Government has cited research by homelessness charity Crisis, which it said suggests preventing 40,000 people from becoming homeless for a year could save taxpayers around £370million.
Political Reactions
Rough sleeping is one form of homelessness, with people living in temporary accommodation provided by councils also considered homeless. Official data published earlier this month showed the number of households in temporary accommodation in England had risen to a record high. A total of 135,580 households were in accommodation ranging from flats to bed and breakfasts at the end of March, including 177,530 children.
The Prime Minister pledged as his "first instruction" on day one in No 10 to "finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK at the earliest opportunity", but the Government has declined to put a deadline on it. Shadow Housing Secretary Sir James Cleverly claimed Mr Burnham "is pledging to end it nationally without any plan for delivery", while deputy Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice dismissed the pledge as "yet another vague announcement with no substance which uses our most vulnerable for political point-scoring".
