Andy Burnham has said government money alone may not be enough to get rough sleepers off the streets by Christmas, as experts called for more of a plan to deal with the problems that cause homelessness.
Speaking on a visit to the north-east of England, the prime minister said he felt “very passionately” about tackling rough sleeping and wanted the wider society to play a part in wiping it out.
He acknowledged that not every rough sleeper may take the offer “for their own reasons”. But he said a nationwide effort to stop as much rough sleeping as possible by Christmas was the aim – replicating what happened in the Covid pandemic.
Burnham 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.”
Burnham wrote in the Guardian on Tuesday that rough sleeping has become so common it now “feels like part of the scenery”, as he pledged another £100m to tackle the problem this winter.
The announcement puts tackling homelessness as a central policy for Burnham’s government, and gives voters a measure by which to judge his success.
As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham introduced schemes such as A Bed Every Night to offer emergency accommodation, but while the number of rough sleepers fell, it then began to increase again.
He said this was because “we were the only place providing that level of support, and understandably, people then travelled to Greater Manchester to access that support”.
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”.
As part of the national effort, Burnham said he would host a 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”.
Council leaders and experts have applauded Burnham’s aims but also called for more work on how to deal with issues underlying rough sleeping, from mental health problems to addiction.
Liam Robinson, leader of Liverpool city council and chair of the Local Government Association’s inclusive growth committee, said there may need to be “future conversations” about more funding to tackle homelessness, including the thousands of people living in temporary accommodation.
“It does need to be resourced more,” he said. “We know councils are spending £950m more than they were five years ago on this issue, so we’re really just talking about the tip of the iceberg with rough sleeping. There may be a requirement for more funding.”
He added that extra money may need to be for “more than just housing-related funding”.
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“It probably requires more NHS investment for better mental health and addiction support,” he said. “It’s more than just paying the bills of hotels and landlords.”
Ish Camp, regional head in east London for the homelessness charity St Mungo’s, added: “Yes it’s good to give everyone a bed for the night but what else are we doing to support them to stay in it?
“Entrenched rough sleepers have usually been round and round all of the systems that are available multiple times before, and it hasn’t worked. So we need to look at why it hasn’t worked and what we can do differently this time around.”
She added that the UK needed to learn from the “temporary accommodation nightmare” to ensure the new funding was not funnelled straight into the pockets of private companies.
“If we publicly say all this money is to give people somewhere to stay for the night and we know there’s no social housing to put anyone in, what will hotel owners do? Put their rates up and charge us £250 a night. That money then gets eaten up very, very quickly,” she said.
Burnham also said on Wednesday that he would be donating 15% of the additional salary he gets as prime minister to homelessness causes.
Speaking to the Big Issue, he said he wanted to continue what he had been doing as mayor of Greater Manchester. He has already said he would donate 15% of the salary he gets for being an MP to local causes in his constituency of Makerfield.
He told the magazine: “For the best part of nine, almost 10 years, I donated 15% of my salary as mayor of Greater Manchester to tackling homelessness in Greater Manchester.
“I am making a commitment to donate the same of my prime minister’s salary. I’m donating part of my constituency MP salary to local organisations, but the extra bit that comes with being prime minister, I’m making the same commitment.
“I wouldn’t want to ask anybody to do anything that I’m not prepared to do. I want to lead from the front. This issue matters massively to me.”
The latest annual national statistics, published 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, with 43% of those people sleeping rough in London and the south-east.
