Andy Burnham exclusive on rough sleeping plan: 'It's not just a one-off thing for Christmas'

Andy Burnham has stated that is bid to get rough sleepers off the street is not just a “little one-off for Christmas” with the prime minister making a “permanent commitment” to tackling street homelessness as Big Issue turned 35.

Just hours after announcing his ambitious effort to move all rough sleepers off the streets by Christmas, Burnham spoke exclusively to Big Issue. The prime minister visited homelessness charity Changing Lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, meeting service users at its Alex’s Place base. He spoke with regional journalists and Kwajo Tweneboa, housing campaigner and Big Issue Ambassador, for social media clips.

But it was Big Issue he chose to first discuss his big plan with in detail. It is testament to Big Issue’s 35 years of award-winning journalism and campaigning for a Britain without homelessness.

Earlier in the day, as the shockwaves from his announcement the night before reverberated, Burnham posted on Instagram to explain a bit more about his plan: the picture he selected was of him wearing a Big Issue tabard.

Burnham stunned everyone by declaring that his first instruction as prime minister would be to put the country on a path to end rough sleeping. Homelessness is rarely so high on a prime minister’s agenda. With a cost of living crisis, a climate crisis leaving Britain cooking, Gaza, Ukraine and a special relationship with a rogue US president to cultivate, Burnham could hardly be blamed for focusing elsewhere. So, why do it?

“Because I was brought up to always think that it’s the most disadvantaged you should always have at the front of your mind,” says Burnham. “And particularly in a moment when you’re in that position of maximum ability to do something, think about the people who most need you to do something. That’s what I was trying to get over there.”

It’s no secret that the former Greater Manchester mayor had been plotting a Westminster return for some time.

But the inspiration for his promise comes from closer to home.

“I talked about the care for people. Get that at the heart of politics,” says Burnham. “That’s got lost over the years. People put other priorities first. It should be about the basic care for everybody.

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“That’s how I was brought up and obviously my family were there as I made that commitment. I discussed it all with them and they said: ‘Yeah, that is the right thing to do’.”

He adds: “Whenever I’m in a moment where I think I’m getting ahead of myself, I go back to the people who could most benefit from my support.

“It regrounds me, it refocuses me, it reminds me what’s important in life. And I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve always tried to apply a bit of that philosophy.”

Andy Burnham is not the first prime minister to promise to end rough sleeping.

Boris Johnson pledged to end rough sleeping in his 2019 manifesto. But a scroll through Hansard shows he mentioned it again only a handful of times – and not at all after 2021 in the House of Commons. 

Johnson was handed a golden opportunity to achieve the goal through the Covid-19 pandemic.

To the Conservatives’ immense credit, the government acted quickly to launch the Everyone In scheme, bringing 37,000 people indoors, housed mainly in hotels and saving hundreds of lives. But it was a missed opportunity. Progress was frittered away and Johnson’s former housing secretary Robert Jenrick later admitted to Big Issue that the Tories had “failed on rough sleeping”.

Big Issue founder Lord John Bird likened Burnham’s announcement to the Covid-era intervention, saying it had “the spirit of Everyone In”. But how can he make his plan more than a short-term fix?

“It’s the same principle as Everyone In but learning from the pandemic as well and perhaps putting in that extra wider support for people, having that follow through in terms of the move-on accommodation and having that in place as soon as people are ready to leave,” says Burnham.

“It’s thinking all of that through and making it a long-term commitment.”

Burnham may have succeeded in shining attention on rough sleeping with his pledge to offer everyone a route off the street by Christmas. But it has also sparked a hefty dose of cynicism.

After all, the government’s official rough sleeping snapshot found a record high number of people on the streets last autumn and London’s Chain network also counted unprecedented highs in 2025.

Keir Starmer’s government launched a homelessness strategy in December last year and, such was the scale of people on the street, ministers settled on a goal of halving rough sleeping by 2029. Burnham is certainly not starting from a low base. So what does he think he can do differently? 

“I’m standing here as prime minister and I’m saying to you this will remain a policy for as long as I’m in this job,” says Burnham. 

“It’s not just a temporary thing, a little one-off for Christmas. We’ve got a focus of trying to get everybody an offer of support by Christmas. But this is a permanent commitment that I’m articulating to you. 

“So let’s see, on that basis, with that long-term horizon. The pandemic was just a short-term fix. Let’s see what we can do when we go at this like that. And I’m so confident actually because of the people who work in homelessness up and down the country. I know their commitment. Often I don’t think their commitment to it is matched by the commitment of those above them, particularly people like me. But now that commitment is there, let’s see what we can do.”

The prime minister can look to past examples for inspiration: New Labour came closest to eradicating rough sleeping in the 2000s. But his new plan has also put increased scrutiny on his own record in Greater Manchester.

There are two schools of thought: Burnham pledged to end rough sleeping but objectively failed and the number of rough sleepers in the city has increased since the pandemic.

On the other side of the argument, Burnham’s A Bed Every Night scheme has reduced rough sleeping to lower levels than when he became mayor in 2017, and that’s come at a time when numbers have risen at a greater rate across other areas of the country. What’s his defence?

“So I’d say the commitment never dimmed and it was there for all of my nine years as mayor,” he says. “But it was a journey of learning and understanding and at all times I was learning more, learning new insights and we did get the numbers right down in the pandemic, and afterwards for a period, and then it started to rise again.”

The A Bed Every Night model now funds 600 beds across Greater Manchester. It will be the regional blueprint for the national push to end rough sleeping.

“What became apparent was, because neighbouring areas weren’t doing that level of commitment, people started to travel to Greater Manchester to access that support and I fully understand why,” he says.

“But it brought over to me this has to be an ‘everyone’ drive or it won’t work because you can’t do it in a piecemeal way. These challenges are in all communities. I was quite clear, actually: as mayor, I was saying I wish everyone would do this with me. Obviously when I became prime minister I thought, ‘Right, we’re going to make sure everyone does it together’. I think you can do it when everyone does it together. The pandemic proved that.

He adds: “It’s learning from Greater Manchester. We got so far, but… it needs everybody to pull in the same direction.”

For rough sleeping to end, it will take efforts to prevent people making it on to the streets in the first place. Prevention is a word you’ll often read on these pages. Lord Bird’s call for long-term thinking rather than short-term fixes reverberates through the magazine. It’s a word that has been heard on Burnham’s lips too.

The £442 million put towards ending rough sleeping, so far, and delivering 1,000 settled homes is likely to be just the start.

It’s notable that the press release announcing his plan included reference to Crisis research that suggested preventing 40,000 people from becoming homeless for a year could save taxpayers around £370 million. The PM won’t be drawn on whether his government will unfreeze local housing allowance rates in next month’s budget – one of the measures that could make a real difference to preventing homelessness in the short-term. 

“I don’t think government money alone sorts this and I am saying let’s see if we can add more to it,” says Burnham, who will hold a national summit this autumn bringing business leaders to his cause. 

Much like Larry the Cat at Downing Street, Big Issue has outlived many a prime minister (nine to be exact) but Burnham is the first one to try selling the magazine, with his regular vendor Colin. When we tell him Big Issue is turning 35, he says “that makes him feel old”. But he is clear on Big Issue’s place in the world in 2026.

“You see the way Colin has got that connection with loads of people in Manchester who go up to him and that’s the heart of this country really, I think,” he says. 

“Big Issue’s made a massive contribution to that over the years. It’s been a really incredible thing, the opportunities it’s given to people like Colin to turn their lives around. And I thank the public who continue to buy it because it still stands for something really important and perhaps more so in these times in which we live.”

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