ANDY Burnham has pledged to end rough sleeping in his “first instruction” to officials on becoming Prime Minister.
It was one of the few concrete policy pledges in the Prime Minister’s first speech after taking the reins from Keir Starmer. But can he achieve it?
The pledge – which is similar to what Jeremy Corbyn said he’d have announced if he ever got the keys to No 10 – was certainly a headline-grabber and it’s something Burnham has said before.
He made the same promise when he became Greater Manchester mayor back in 2017, saying the issue would be eradicated in three years.
While he failed to meet that target, Burnham made progress, cutting the number of rough sleepers by 57%.
However, there are fears in Manchester that in his ambition, Burnham made a trap for himself.
Reporting by The Mill has suggested that the pledge to end rough sleeping caused the number of people housed in temporary accommodation – which the investigative site characterised as “grim” – to balloon.
From 2013 to 2022, the number of households in temporary accommodation soared by 600% from 400 to 2500, a rise that was nine times faster than the national average, The Mill’s investigation found.
That is believed to have been driven by the simple incentive that it created for rough sleepers from around England to go to Manchester where they would get a place to stay under Burnham’s A Bed Every Night (ABEN) scheme.
One former senior council worker told The Mill: “If what you’re doing is making sure everyone is off the streets straight away, you create a conveyor belt where people just know, come to Manchester and that’s a quick way to get a place to live.”
This created the situation where people who were judged to be “at risk” of rough sleeping, though not actually on the streets, were getting priority for social housing ahead of other vulnerable groups, such as disabled mothers.
In further details released by No 10 after Burnham’s speech, £340 million funding has been announced to go towards acquiring suitable homes, identifying those most in need and starting to provide housing and support “without delay”.
The funding will provide 1200 homes and intensive support for at least 3000 long-term rough sleepers over a five-year period, the Government said.
The money, said to be from within uncommitted Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government budgets, will be on top of the previously announced £3.6 billion funding under the National Plan to End Homelessness – which came under Starmer’s premiership – bringing the total to over £3.9bn.
In a written statement provided by No 10, Burnham said: “For too long, we’ve been told that ending rough sleeping will take decades or even that it’s impossible. I’m not having that.
“This is something a government can fix if it chooses to. Today, I’m choosing to.”
Responding to questions over the mixed fortunes of the Manchester model, Burnham said earlier on Monday that he wanted to emulate the “Everyone In” scheme that was used during the Covid pandemic.
Speaking before his formal appointment as PM, he said: “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.”
The latest annual national statistics, published by the Government in February this year, estimated there were 4793 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.
Figures published in April showed 3944 people were sleeping rough in London in January-March 2026.
Homeless Link, which manages the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) homelessness database report, said this was down from 4427 in the same period in 2025.
Analysis of annual figures showed that around a fifth of London’s new rough sleepers were people who had last been in asylum accommodation.
The findings show the asylum system remains “a significant route onto the streets of the capital”, researchers from Chain said.
There were 4978 people on London’s streets in the year to March with information recorded about where they were last settled.
Of those, 21% or 1037 people reported that they had been staying in asylum support accommodation.
Meanwhile, official UK Government figures showed a slight fall in the number of households in temporary accommodation – the first reduction in three years.
Temporary accommodation is a form of homelessness and can include hostels, refuges, and bed and breakfasts.
There were 134,210 households in such accommodation at the end of December 2025, down from 134,700 at the end of September 2025, according to official data published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in April.
But while the latest number dropped slightly below the previous record levels, it was still 5.0% higher than the figure for the end of December 2024 which was 127,820.
The number of children in temporary accommodation has, however, continued to rise, standing at 176,130 at the end of December, up from 175,930 at the end of September.
The number was up 6% year on year, from 165,450 at the end of December 2024.
Housing is a devolved area of policy and the Scottish Government’s latest statistics show the numbers of people in temporary accommodation and sleeping rough were rising.
