Prime Minister Andy Burnham made his first visit to the North East on Wednesday to announce an ambitious new pledge to get all rough sleepers a bed by this Christmas, backed by a "relentless" push to end homelessness for good.
Burnham visited homelessness charity Changing Lives' Alex's Place crisis facility in Elswick alongside housing secretary Angela Rayner and North East mayor Kim McGuinness. The visit followed his promise of a £442 million funding uplift to help roll out new accommodation and support services.
Ending rough sleeping was the first pledge Burnham made after coming into Downing Street last month.
Previous efforts fell short
Previous local efforts to end rough sleeping, including Burnham's own as Greater Manchester mayor and Newcastle's Street Zero programme, ultimately did not deliver sustained success. The number of people sleeping rough in Newcastle increased from 14 seen bedded down in one night in November 2022 to 46 on an equivalent night in 2025.
Rayner told the Local Democracy Reporting Service on Wednesday that a "sustainable and continuous" programme of support could make a longer term difference than local efforts that slipped due to a lack of national backing. She said there needs to be a "relentless" focus on the issue – including a major council house building drive and the joining up of mental health, addiction, and other support services to prevent people falling back into crisis.
Rayner said: "When we have a scheme and have the leadership that says we want to tackle this issue, we make really good progress. When people say to me 'you can't end rough sleeping', actually we have proven that if you have a relentless focus and draw on the services of support for people then there is no reason you cannot end it.
"But you have to keep going at it. It can't be a pilot, it can't be a one-off, and can't be something in one particular part of the country. It has to be a national scheme where we all put our efforts in."
Funding and local impact
McGuinness said that the lack of national funding was the "elephant in the room" when discussing Street Zero and other local initiatives, and that emergency efforts to get people off the streets during the Covid pandemic were also "not sustained".
The Labour mayor said: "Today's announcement comes with very significant funding, a very clear target to get everyone who wants to be off the streets for Christmas off the streets, and we know how to deploy those resources locally to get that done.
"We have proven we can do it before, but now it is a case of investing that cash that has been devolved to us and making sure there is a concerted effort to support people for the long term. This is now a properly-funded, properly-resourced plan to tackle homelessness and that is not something we have had a focus on for far too long."
Burnham and Rayner also met with Newcastle City Council leader Colin Ferguson, who called for extra funding for local councils who are "at the coal face when it comes to challenges including homelessness, housing and other frontline services". Newcastle saw the second largest absolute increase in the estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single autumn night from 2024 to 2025 – up from 21 to 46, a 119% rise.
Ferguson, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Gosforth, added: "What we need to see is a commitment to long-term funding to ensure councils can invest in systematic changes and long-term support, in collaboration with key partners. Given we see residents from outside of Newcastle presenting as homeless in the city centre, cities like ours must receive a greater share of any funding pot.
"The Prime Minister is saying the right things, so what we need now is more action, greater devolution and direct funding to local councils who are best placed to ensure support reaches those who need it most, as quickly as possible."
