Prime Minister Andy Burnham has issued a “rallying call” to get rough sleepers off the streets for Christmas, but admitted Government money alone may not be enough to solve the problem. He visited an organisation in the North East of England on Wednesday to announce his pledge to offer a place to stay to every rough sleeper by Christmas.
Additional funding announced
Mr Burnham has announced an additional £102 million, 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 £8.4 million boost to the Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund, in recognition of the work of charities, faith groups and community organisations in the sector. The £102 million will go alongside £340 million announced last month for new support to get long-term rough sleepers into settled accommodation over the next three years.
Record rough sleeping numbers
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 not every rough sleeper might take the offer “for their own reasons”. He also said the millions he was announcing in funding might not be enough on its own to get the job done.
Rallying call to wider society
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 also defended his record on rough sleeping as mayor of Greater Manchester, where he introduced schemes such as A Bed Every Night to provide emergency accommodation. The number of rough sleepers initially fell, but then began to rise again, because “we were the only place providing that level of support, and understandably, people then travelled to Greater Manchester to access that support”.
National summit planned
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”. He added: “So my point is, we can do this, but only if all areas are pulling in the same direction, and that’s what this funding is designed to achieve – to make this a nationwide initiative as we go into the Christmas period, getting everybody 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 £370 million.
Mixed reactions
Homelessness charities welcomed the announcement as a “strong start” that puts the country on a path to end rough sleeping, but critics said it lacked detail and substance. Shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly claimed Mr Burnham “is pledging to end it (rough sleeping) nationally without any plan for delivery”, while deputy Reform UK leader Richard Tice dismissed the pledge as “yet another vague announcement with no substances which uses our most vulnerable for political point-scoring”. Liberal Democrat housing spokesman Gideon Amos said “sticking plasters won’t fix the homelessness crisis”.
