'Andy Burnham is right to make ending rough sleeping his first priority. Now comes the hard part'

When Andy Burnham stood on the steps of Downing Street and made ending rough sleeping his first pledge as prime minister, he sent a powerful message about the kind of country he wants Britain to be.

For those of us who have spent years campaigning on homelessness, it was also a welcome acknowledgement that rough sleeping is not an inevitable feature of modern life. It is a policy choice. And if it is a policy choice, it can be changed.

As co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ending Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, I have spoken to hundreds of people with lived experience of homelessness, frontline charities, local authorities, housing providers, and health professionals. The overwhelming lesson is simple: nobody should accept rough sleeping as normal.

But if we are serious about ending it, we need to be honest about what that requires.

Read more:

• Andy Burnham must tackle poverty as prime minister. Here’s Big Issue’s blueprint for him to follow
• New prime minister Andy Burnham starts with vow to end rough sleeping. Here’s how he aims to do it
• Here’s what Andy Burnham can do right away to address homelessness and NEETs crisis

The latest figures show almost 4,800 people sleeping rough on a single night in England, the highest level since records began and the fourth consecutive annual increase. Behind every statistic is a person whose life has unravelled through some combination of poverty, poor health, trauma, relationship breakdown, addiction, insecure housing, or failures in public services.

Too often political debate focuses on the visible symptom rather than the underlying causes.

Rough sleeping is the sharp end of a much wider homelessness crisis.

If we only focus on tents, doorways, and sleeping bags, we will miss the thousands of people living in temporary accommodation, sofa surfing with friends, trapped in unsuitable housing or at imminent risk of losing their home. Charities have rightly warned that any strategy focused solely on street homelessness risks overlooking the wider and growing crisis of hidden homelessness.

That is why the prime minister‘s pledge must become more than an emergency response. It must become a national mission built around prevention.

First, we need a guarantee that nobody leaves a public institution into homelessness.

No one should be discharged from hospital onto the streets. No one should leave prison with nowhere safe to sleep. No young person leaving care should find homelessness waiting for them at the point they are supposed to begin adult life. The government’s existing homelessness strategy already recognises the importance of reducing homelessness among prison leavers and care leavers. Now those ambitions need to be delivered.

Second, we need to scale up Housing First.

The evidence is clear that for people facing the most complex challenges, the traditional model of moving step by step through temporary accommodation often fails. Housing First starts from a different principle: provide a secure home first, then wrap personalised support around the individual. It is an approach supported by homelessness organisations across the country and has already demonstrated positive outcomes for people with histories of entrenched homelessness.

Third, we need to recognise that this is as much a health issue as a housing issue.

People who sleep rough experience some of the worst health inequalities in our society. Mental ill-health, addiction, untreated physical conditions, and trauma are commonplace. The NHS, public health services, councils, and housing providers need to work together around shared objectives rather than separate organisational boundaries.

Fourth, we need more genuinely affordable housing.

No strategy for ending rough sleeping can succeed if there are insufficient homes for people to move into. We need a new generation of social and affordable housing alongside specialist supported accommodation for those who need it. The government’s own National Plan to End Homelessness recognises that housing supply is fundamental to solving homelessness in the long term.

And finally, we need to listen to people who have experienced homelessness themselves.

The most effective policies are often shaped by those who understand the system from the inside. The voices of people with lived experience should not be an afterthought. They should be central to designing and evaluating the solutions. The government’s homelessness strategy explicitly acknowledges the importance of lived experience in shaping future action.

I applaud the prime minister for putting homelessness at the heart of his first days in office. It demonstrates moral purpose and political courage. But bold announcements are always easier than lasting change.

The true test will not be whether rough sleeping falls for a year or two. The true test will be whether this government can build a country where homelessness is prevented before it begins, where support arrives before crisis hits, and where everyone has access to the safety and dignity of a place to call home.

As someone who has campaigned on this issue for many years, I believe that goal is achievable.

Not because it is easy. But because the alternative, accepting that thousands of people should sleep on our streets every night, is simply unacceptable.

Paula Barker MP is co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ending Homelessness and Rough Sleeping.

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