Andy Burnham Pledges to End Rough Sleeping: But What Is His Plan and Will It Work?

Andy Burnham’s first promise after entering Downing Street has been to completely eradicate rough sleeping across the country in time for Christmas. Although it's an ambitious goal, it has been a long term interest for Burnham and something he has been passionate about for quite some time. After being elected mayor of Manchester in 2017, Burnham made a similar pledge to completely end rough sleeping in the city by 2020. He managed to significantly reduce numbers of those on the streets through projects like A Bed Every Night, however, numbers began rising again post-lockdown, which raises doubts on the likelihood of success in 2026. 

To emphasise the importance of this goal, housing is a core right under international law. In Britain, there is a significant population of people that face unstable, unsafe and unaffordable housing, with 4793 people rough sleeping in England in 2025. Life expectancy for rough sleepers is between 42-44, far below the national average. Aside from the deprivation of dignity, rough sleeping removes the basic moral principle of a right to life which, in modern British society, is completely unacceptable and deserves to be prioritised. 

The current government plan is to return to the prioritisation of this issue during the pandemic Everyone In scheme where almost all rough sleepers were brought off the streets and put into emergency accommodation. In current times, the empty hotels which were available during Covid are not an option. Therefore, £442m of funding will be designated towards emergency accommodation as well as creating 1000 homes to act as permanent residences for rough sleepers. This will also sit alongside “intensive wraparound support” which will offer psychiatric, drug and alcohol related issues to target some of the problems which force people onto the streets.

Manchester’s A Bed Every Night and Burnham’s current national plans are inspired by the Housing First strategy: an approach to tackling homelessness which provides housing first and foremost without requiring any other prerequisites. It is centred around the belief that progress and improvement to a person’s life is impossible without a safe and secure place to live. Therefore, housing provided by these schemes has universal access and enacts additional support after the housing is in place, rather than requiring certain standards like sobriety to gain access to housing. Across the world, Housing First has an 80% retention rate for long term housing, proving the empirical backing of its success. This philosophy has never been channelled into a nationally spanned approach which indicates that by shaking things up, Burnham may see some success. 

Interest groups have stressed the importance of providing general support alongside physical housing in order to tackle the root of issues surrounding homelessness. Those who have experienced rough sleeping have highlighted that it can happen to anyone, so responses and solutions need to emphasise the human aspect of the issue and recognise that it will take cooperation across institutions to create an effective system to empathetically deal with rough sleeping. Accordingly, there must also be an acknowledgement that this will not be an easy fix and should be a long term goal which lives past the media’s attention span. 

Acknowledging those with fiscal concerns, the success of this policy could actually provide a long term cost benefit for the country. The cost of rough sleeping for 12 months is £20,128 and so a huge drain on government resources. When the question is posed whether this is the right policy focus for the current government, my response is that we must start from the most impoverished in the country, those living without the basic right of a safe and secure home, and fix these issues from the bottom up. Not only does this have moral benefits and allow citizens to live prosperous lives, but it allows the government to engage in positive spending by making investments that feed back into the country’s success. 

Although Burnham’s optimistic approach to tackling his policy ambitions has proved to be grating for many observers, it may provide the shift that British politics has been desperately craving. Since the introduction of Austerity measures in 2010, Westminster has been bombarded with largely negative language. The narrative has revolved on remaining cautious, tiptoeing around the black hole of national debt. The consequence of this has been crumbling public services providing the backdrop to an ever present cost of living crisis. Burnham’s pledge to end rough sleeping has the potential to bring with it a fresh new era of hope.

Consequently, when forming my opinion I have chosen to have hope and acknowledge that shedding light on the most basic poverty issues facing the country is a step in the right direction for an improved Britain. Perhaps this can create a movement to hold politicians accountable to their visions before enacting blind criticism. If the PM focuses on boosting his ideas and innovation over falling into a battle of personality and charisma next to the Farage’s and Polanski’s of the world, I believe this will lead the country and the people in it down the road to prosperity.