By Ben Kerrigan-
Andy Burnham has made ending rough sleeping one of the defining promises of his new premiership, pledging that everyone sleeping on the streets will be offered a route into accommodation this winter. His first major homelessness initiative commits an additional £102m, taking total funding to £442m, with ministers promising emergency accommodation alongside help with housing, health and other needs.
But Burnham inherits a homelessness crisis that has worsened dramatically over recent years. Official figures show 4,793 people were estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025 — the highest figure since the current snapshot system began in 2010 and 171% higher than that year’s 1,768. That makes Burnham’s pledge considerably more ambitious than the promises of several previous governments.
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The starkest comparison is Boris Johnson’s premiership. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Johnson’s government launched the “Everyone In” programme, bringing thousands of rough sleepers into emergency accommodation. The autumn 2020 snapshot fell to 2,688 — 43% below the 2017 peak of 4,751. The government said the initiative had helped 37,000 people into secure accommodation.
But that success proved difficult to sustain. Rough sleeping subsequently climbed to 3,069 in 2022, 3,898 in 2023 and 4,667 in 2024, before reaching the new record in 2025. The contrast presents Burnham with both an opportunity and a warning. His argument is that the pandemic demonstrated that government can rapidly get people off the streets when political will, funding and cooperation between councils, charities and health services are brought together.
The figures also show that emergency accommodation alone cannot permanently solve rough sleeping. Burnham has therefore promised a broader response, including practical assistance with housing and healthcare, while convening a national summit involving businesses, charities, financial organisations, faith groups and health bodies.
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“No-one should have to bed down in a doorway or outside a station,” Burnham said, arguing that Westminster has become too accustomed to seeing people sleep rough. His challenge now is to prove that this is more than another political pledge.The numbers make the scale of the task unmistakable. In 2025, rough sleeping increased for the fourth consecutive year, while the latest government data also found that 8,010 people were estimated to have slept rough at some point during December alone. Burnham has set himself a deceptively simple objective: get everyone in by Christmas.
Previous governments have shown that dramatic reductions are possible. The failure to maintain those gains shows how difficult it is to make them permanent. The real test for Burnhamwill not be whether fewer people are sleeping rough this winter. It will be whether his government can ensure that people do not simply return to the streets once the emergency measures end.
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