’If anyone’s going to do it, it will be him’, says Manchester homelessness charity boss
Homelessness charities have welcomed Andy Burnham’s vow to end rough sleeping but warned that the new prime minister cannot afford to ignore the growing ‘hidden homelessness’ crisis in the UK.
Speaking outside Downing Street for the first time as prime minister, Andy Burnham said that his first instruction to his government would be to “end rough sleeping” and that he will put “the care of people at the heart of everything I do.”
The prime minister added: “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.
“We’ll get to work immediately, bringing together national and local government with the investment needed to get it done.”
The latest annual national statistics, published in February, showed an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025 in England, a new record high, marking the fourth annual increase in a row.
Speaking to The Independent following the prime minister’s speech, Helen MacNamara, the chair of trustees at homelessness charity Shelter, described the promise to end rough sleeping as “tremendous news”.
“It’s great to see a prime minister standing on the steps of Downing Street, and that the first thing he says is talking about ending rough sleeping and his commitment to building council housing.
“This is one of the pestilences of our age for sure, and Andy Burnham means what he says about rough sleeping. He did make a [similar] commitment in Manchester, and those numbers have started to come down, so I think we can be confident that he means it.”
She added: “There have been tried and tested ways of tackling rough sleeping, and it sounds like he’s going to go for a housing-first approach, and it can be done, governments could end rough sleeping if they need to.
“It’s fantastic to see a prime minister in this first intervention talk about the importance of housing and somebody with a very strong commitment to getting rid of the kind of shame on us as a society of rough sleeping. We shouldn’t have people sleeping on our streets.”
However, Ms MacNamara warned about the “hidden homelessness” problem that Burnham also needs to solve.
“The bit of housing that I’m also extremely worried about is the hidden homelessness that you can’t see,” she said. “So, it’s not the people on the streets, that obviously really matters, but we’ve got 176,000 children who currently don’t have a permanent home.
“This hidden homelessness, it’s the families and the children, the kids in primary school that don’t have a permanent home, and you’ve got people living in hotels, in B&Bs, in HMOs where you’ve got a mum and their kids crammed into one bedroom or are not able to cook, and there’s no kitchen and the kids are doing their homework with no space and nothing of kind to call their own, and they’re not even sure if they’re going to be back to the same place after. It’s just so damaging.”
According to government figures, there were 134,210 households as part of the “hidden homelessness” issue at the end of December 2025, down from 134,700 at the end of September 2025.
According to figures from homelessness charity Crisis, there are around 208,600 households across the country experiencing “hidden homelessness” on any given night – a rise of almost a third (30 per cent) since 2020.
The number of children in temporary accommodation has also continued to rise, standing at 176,130 at the end of December, up from 175,930 at the end of September, according to government figures. The number was up 6 per cent year on year, from 165,450 at the end of December 2024.
Also praising the prime minister’s approach was Yvonne Hope, chief executive of Barnabus, a homelessness charity that operates in Manchester, where Mr Burnham was mayor between 2017 and 2026, who said that she is “over the moon” with the announcement.
“If anyone’s going to do it, it will be him,” she said. “He’s got the determination, he’s got the knowledge, but he’s also got the humility to understand this is a human story.”
In further details set out by No 10, £340 million funding was 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 1,200 homes and intensive support for at least 3,000 long-term rough sleepers over five years, 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 Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership – bringing the total to over £3.9 billion.
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