It was noted recently on Northwest Bylines that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham had devised an alternative plan for welfare that was radically different to the plans put forward recently by Liz Kendall.
A key aspect of this plan is to make housing a priority, with the recently published Greater Manchester 10-year plan said to be ‘anchored on the idea of a ‘housing first’ city region’: having the foundation of a good home makes life better for the residents of the city, so alleviating the housing crisis will be ‘a number one priority’.
The building of social housing will provide stability for people who need it, enabling them to then think more clearly about getting back into work (for which it is envisaged help will also be provided).
No Place Like Home; Centre for Social Justice report
A recently published report from the Centre for Social Justice, No Place Like Home, has suggested that in 2024, rough sleeping was ‘up 20 per cent on the previous year, and 91 per cent since the COVID-19 pandemic.’ Not only this, but it was also argued that rough sleeping is ‘just the tip of the iceberg’: in 2024, local authorities were pushed to the point of bankruptcy as English councils spent £2.3 billion on temporary accommodation.
The report goes on to state that, since 2018, Housing First’s approach is the most well-evidenced and effective intervention to ‘end homelessness for Britain’s most disadvantaged and entrenched rough sleepers.’
The authors go on to say that there must be a commitment to rolling Housing First’s services out further, otherwise the government will struggle to meet its aim – as pledged in their manifesto – of tackling homelessness.In the report, the Centre for Social Justice makes the case for a targeted expansion of Housing First in England, which would deliver 5,571 places by 2029/30. In this way, the success of the three national pilots in Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester, and West Midlands, would be spread further afield – ensuring that every English region had access to an equivalent Housing First intervention.
It was further argued that a national Housing First programme, alongside a cross-government strategy firmly focused on prevention, would target the most vulnerable and disadvantaged cohort, and so respond to the most severe consequences of homelessness.
Steve Rotheram
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, commented:
Housing First is not just a successful pilot – it’s a model for reform. We’ve proven it works. Now we need to match that with ambition and make it the foundation of a national mission to end homelessness for good.
Response from Burnham
Meanwhile, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham was quoted as saying:
The Labour government was elected on a promise to end sticking plaster solutions. Housing First is exactly that: a long-term, ambitious, and transformational policy that works to end homelessness for the vast majority of people supported by it. I welcome this report by the CSJ which sets out a clear path for how the government can support the scale-up of Housing First across England, so that every region can share in the success we’ve seen here in Greater Manchester.
Burnham went on to say that,
If you set people up to succeed – they largely do. Tackling homelessness is not just an economic imperative, but also a moral mission.
Labour and homelessness
The comments from Burnham and Rotheram must be seen in the context of Labour’s previous commitments to tackling homelessness: their 2024 manifesto stated previous progress had been undone by the Conservative government of 2010-24, and went on to promise they would ‘put Britain back on track to ending homelessness.’
It was then reported at the end of last year that Labour had pledged to spend almost £1bn on tackling homelessness in 2025, including what was described as ‘the largest-ever investment in prevention, in a bid to ‘turn the tide’ on the record-high numbers of people living without a secure home’. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was said to have made the announcement on 16 December, pledging to ‘break the cycle’ of the homelessness crisis by making a shift towards prevention.
Comment
The evidence seems to suggest that both the Labour Westminster government and Northwest elected mayors, such as Burnham and Rotheram, are singing from the same hymn sheet here – but perhaps from different parts of it.
Interestingly, it has also been argued that government ministers are thought to be considering allowing Homes England to have more regional power, so that it can be ‘involved in planning at a local level, ensuring that the right homes are built in the right places’.
Burnham and Rotheram would appear to want faster progress in the use of Housing First to tackle homelessness across the country. Again, we can see policies and ideas developed away from Westminster, specifically in the North West, which are genuinely pointing a positive way forward for the country as a whole. Let us hope that the Labour government does indeed allow devolved authorities, especially in the North, to have more power to help people into housing and back into society.
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