Burnham Pledges to End Rough Sleeping and Build More Council Homes

Andy Burnham has said his first act as prime minister will be to tackle the homelessness crisis. 

Speaking outside Number 10 Downing Street shortly after formally accepting his new role at Buckingham Palace, Burnham said: “I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction, to end rough sleeping in our country.” 

The drive will be backed by an extra £340m in funding that will “provide 1,200 homes and intensive support for at least 3,000 people”, a statement from the prime minister’s office said. 

The new money will take “overall funding to record levels” and represents the opening investment in a five-year plan, more details of which will be set out before the autumn, the statement added. 

“The prime minister rejects the notion that ending rough sleeping will take decades or that it can’t be done at all,” it said. “This effort will benefit everyone… reducing the pressure that repeated crisis interventions place on the NHS, the criminal justice system and other public services.” 

In today’s speech, Burnham said he would lay out a 10-year plan for the UK later this year, but that he would announce some measures on Tuesday aimed at giving people “breathing space now, some help with the cost of living.”    

He also said his government will “build more council homes” as part of finding a “fair and sustainable way to bring the welfare bill down.” 

His government will bring forward “the biggest changes in the last 40 years” with a “new political model and a new economic model”, he added. 

“In the 1980s Britain took some wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country deindustrialised and they still haven’t recovered. And that’s why we will change politics… and we will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land.”

And he pledged to “put life’s essentials back under stronger public control, to make them affordable to you again” while “reindustrialising Britain, using public procurement to back British industry.”   

His allies last month briefed journalists that he was “serious” about bringing energy and water into public control as prime minister. Critics have noted, however, that his new chief of staff James Purnell is a corporate lobbyist whose former firm, Flint Global, has advised privately owned Thames Water. 

Burnham previously pledged to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester during his tenure as mayor. The number of rough sleepers did fall in the years after he became mayor in 2017, but from 2022 they started to rise again.  

He has also rolled back on his call to end ‘no recourse to public funds’ – a policy that restricts access to benefits and housing for people moving to the UK. The rule is considered a key driver of homelessness by rights advocates.