Andy Burnham’s vow to end rough sleeping in England by Christmas exposed as ‘nonsense’

Andy Burnham’s £874million vow to end rough sleeping by Christmas has been branded “nonsense” after a Manchester councillor said the Prime Minister left her city still battling a homelessness crisis. On Monday, Labour vowed to double the funding to tackle homelessness in England after the PM promised to give every rough sleeper a route off the streets by Christmas 2026.

But he made a similar vow in 2017 when mayor of Greater Manchester. Even though the number of rough sleepers a night fell from 268 to 90, that figure has now doubled to 197. Meanwhile, 9,589 people are sofa-surfing or in emergency accommodation. In July, Manchester rough sleepers told the Express there were not enough hostels, with Glaswegian Joseph McDowell, 63, bemoaning: “At night I sleep where I can. It’s dangerous. People p*** on you.”

Now Reform UK’s Sian Astley, who came second with more than 111,000 votes in the race to replace Mr Burnham as mayor, says the idea of sorting the issue nationally in just the few weeks before Christmas is “ridiculous” and “nonsense”. The Manchester city councillor, who represents Baguley, has visited the city’s rough sleepers and hostels but says getting them off the streets is sadly incredibly “complex”.

Ms Astley said: “I’m seeing with my own eyes the reality of the situation in Manchester and – excuse my French – the whole thing’s an absolute s***show. It’s a nonsense for Burnham to say that his policy on homelessness, whether that’s rough sleepers or whether that’s people in temporary accommodation, has been successful in Manchester.

“But I understand why he wants to spend £800million across England, because at the minute he’s been trumpeting about Manchester and about how brilliant Manchester is. I just think the whole thing is ridiculous.

“What really upsets a lot of them is they know they’ve got complex problems and they want to be helped. But people coming to the city such as migrants, who may not have drug problems or been repeatedly homeless in Manchester for 15 years, get helped because they’re seen as ‘easier to help’.”

Ms Astley also suggested that some people flock to Manchester, from abroad and within the UK, because they believe the hype of it being a “City of Sanctuary” that supposedly leads the way in tackling the issue.

She added: “People head to Manchester – you see that. People sitting on the desk at the town hall (see) people turning up with a suitcase, saying ‘we believe we can have a bed for a night’, or ‘we believe anybody in Manchester gets housed’.

“When I was doing some of the electoral paperwork, I was actually in the town hall reception, and a guy just walked in with a suitcase from Morecambe. He said he lost his accommodation in Lancashire and he’d come to Manchester, and could he have a flat?

“The staff dealt with it absolutely brilliantly, and he was quite amenable – they stressed that he returned to Lancashire. They weren’t being rude, just very practical.

I said to them, ‘how often does it happen?’ And they’re like ‘every day’. It has created massive problems because you get some into temporary accommodation, but more people keep pouring into the funnel.”

As a builder who previously starred on BBC One’s DIY SOS and the BBC Two series Your Home Made Perfect before going into politics, Ms Astley said not enough new social housing is being built for the homeless. She added: “There’s no housing. As a councillor, you get casework, and some emails – from people who are absolutely desperate – I just think, ‘I can’t help you’.

“There was a guy a few weeks ago who found himself homeless after a split-up. I helped him register as homeless on the housing, and it says ‘you will be contacted within three days’. It’s about a month ago, and nobody’s even got in touch with him. So, he’s living on his brother’s garage floor.

“Bev Craig, the new Mayor of Greater Manchester, understands the problems and is very switched on, but what’s she going to do about it? I don’t know.

“I look at mass immigration, the fact that Manchester is a sanctuary city. You cannot just keep pouring people into a city where there are 20,000 people on the housing register and 200 a night sleeping rough, 10,000 people registered homeless with half of them kids.”

Shadow Housing Secretary Katie Lam said rough sleeping had hit “record highs under Labour” and criticised Mr Burnham for failing to end rough sleeping when he was running the North-west of England region. Across England, recent official figures estimate there were 4,793 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025.

Homelessness organisations pointed to a lack of social housing, placing a strain on efforts to cut rough sleeping. When Greater Manchester mayor in 2018, Mr Burnham set up “a bed every night” scheme to offer emergency accommodation to those on the streets. It now provides more than 600 bed spaces, assigning teams to help rough sleepers find permanent housing, addiction support and other types of care.

It led to a drop in the number of rough sleepers in Greater Manchester from 268 in 2017, to 90 in 2021. But the figure has risen each year since then. Paul Dennett, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s lead for Housing First, blamed “austerity, welfare cuts, and the chronic undersupply of social housing” as major factors.

Professor Beth Watts-Cobbe, of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, said while numbers had gone up, Greater Manchester still compares “really favourably to the national picture”. Asked about his previous attempts to end rough sleeping in Manchester, Mr Burnham accepted that people were coming to the city to seek a roof over their head.

He said: “I bring the learning from that to this. The reason why the figures went back up is because we were the only place that was offering a bed every night, so people came to Greater Manchester knowing that we were providing a higher level of support … I realised that it’s only if everywhere does it at the same level that you can actually end rough sleeping.”

Ex-pro basketballer Jerelle “Jefe” Okoro, 35, has been helping feed the homeless across Greater Manchester with his Jefe’s Ramen pop-ups – where he encourages people to buy one ramen dish and donate another to feed rough sleepers. Having been homeless himself, the kind-hearted volunteer knows the struggle of finding a hot meal and has been urging local pubs and charities to get on board and grow his initiative.

His most recent night sold more than 50 bowls of ramen – meaning 50 meals for the homeless – and lifted footfall at the pub where he did the pop-up by 40%, thereby boosting their takings too.

Jefe, a former professional basketball player for Leicester Riders, told the Express: “I think Mr Burnham is doing his best trying to highlight the issues. A lot of people think this is a battle that he is using to champion his position and make him look more relatable. He has been trying to put the focus on how some of these numbers are.

“Unfortunately, it’s a problem that we have to work together to fix. If the problem isn’t acknowledged, then it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, it can’t be attacked.

“I think the shift will happen when the UK realise that a lot of issues will only change when we, as the people, stand and choose to make a difference ourselves. I hope Jefe’s Ramen is a catalyst for more people understanding that we need to work together to fix this and there are solutions if we work together.”

Jefe’s Ramen is a community interest company (CIC), meaning it is run in the interest of benefitting the community, not to generate profits.

He added: “I’ve been on the other side of this. I can’t ignore what I saw and experienced. Every city has a pub with a quiet night and a kitchen doing nothing, and every city has people with nowhere to sleep.”

In July, homeless mother-of-three Michelle Benjamin, 34, told the Express she had been living on the streets of Manchester since December, having previously worked in sales and cafes. She said then that Mr Burnham needed to “open his eyes” to the reality of homelessness in his own city before thinking he could solve it for the rest of England.

To support Jefe in feeding more homeless, donate at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/jefesramen