Andy Burnham has pledged to end rough sleeping across Britain in one of his first acts as Prime Minister. In a bold promise outside No10, the new Labour leader vowed: "I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction: to end rough sleeping in our country."
Funding and Immediate Steps
Downing Street, which described the issue as one of the "starkest injustices in the country," later said the pledge would be backed by an initial £340 million boost in funding to help at least 3,000 rough sleepers. Just hours before his first speech as Prime Minister, Mr Burnham visited the homelessness charity The Passage in Victoria, London. The organisation has the Prince of Wales as its royal patron, with William having first visited in 1993 alongside his mother Diana, then Princess of Wales.
Lessons from Manchester
During the visit, Mr Burnham referred to the "Everyone In" scheme set up during the Covid crisis, which helped thousands of rough sleepers across England backed by emergency government funding. However, figures showed rough sleeping rose towards the end of his tenure as Greater Manchester Mayor. The new PM said: "What I learned was, 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. 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. We did it then. We can do it now. Get the basics right. Put a care for people at the heart of everything that we do and just get this country working as it should again."
Scale of the Challenge
The latest government statistics highlight the scale of the task. Data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government showed there were 4,793 rough sleepers in England in autumn 2025. This was an increase of 3% on the previous year and a staggering 171% hike on 2010 when the snapshot approach was first introduced. Almost half – 43% – of all people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn were in London and the South East.
On-the-Ground Engagement
On Monday, Mr Burnham also accompanied charity workers at The Passage on their daily check-in with rough sleepers in the Victoria area. He later returned to the charity's building to help with food preparation by chopping mushrooms for the day's breakfast and lunch. He told the charity’s chief executive, Mick Clarke, that he had "seen your world from the ground" as Manchester mayor. He said: "When you have that experience, you can do something with it when you are back at the national level. You change lives everyday (here)."
Reactions from Campaigners
Big Issue founder Lord John Bird said: "Andy Burnham’s first pledge as Prime Minister is to end rough sleeping. This is a Prime Minister with his priorities straight. I'm also encouraged to hear his intention to build a more preventative state. This will be crucial if he truly wants to eradicate rough sleeping for good." The chief executive of housing charity Crisis added: "It is absolutely fantastic to see that, just minutes into his new job as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham is prioritising tackling homelessness – committing to end rough sleeping across the country as his 'first instruction' to his new government. 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."
