{"id":4480,"date":"2026-09-22T09:58:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T09:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/22\/politics-home-article-appoint-homelessness-tsar-to-help-eradicate-rough-sleeping-pm-told\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T09:58:06","slug":"politics-home-article-appoint-homelessness-tsar-to-help-eradicate-rough-sleeping-pm-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/22\/politics-home-article-appoint-homelessness-tsar-to-help-eradicate-rough-sleeping-pm-told\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics Home Article | Appoint Homelessness Tsar To Help Eradicate Rough Sleeping, PM Told"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \"Nadine <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n 5 min read<\/span>21 September<\/span>
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Andy Burnham should appoint a homelessness tsar to help\u00a0with his pledge to end rough sleeping, according to the head of a leading homelessness charity.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, told PoliticsHome that the Prime Minister needs someone\u00a0who\u00a0“knocks heads together” across Whitehall and\u00a0improves coordination\u00a0inside and outside government\u00a0when it comes to tackling homelessness.<\/p>\n

Burnham pledged to end rough sleeping in the UK when he first entered No 10 after replacing Keir Starmer in July.<\/p>\n

Last month, he\u00a0announced that\u00a0emergency accommodation will be made available to\u00a0ensure that all rough sleepers have somewhere safe to live by Christmas.<\/p>\n

“We did it in the pandemic. We can do it again. But it needs all of us,” the PM said.<\/p>\n

“Government will put the money in. But I\u2019m asking\u00a0leaders in communities and sectors across society to play their part locally too. Let\u2019s get people out the cold. And let\u2019s bring back hope.”<\/p>\n

Rough sleeping hit record highs at the start of 2026, with\u00a04,793 people recorded as\u00a0sleeping rough on a single night in autumn in 2025, according to government figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking to PoliticsHome\u00a0ahead of Labour conference getting underway in Liverpool later this week, Downie described the Prime Minister’s\u00a0pledge to eradicate homelessness as “the biggest moment” for his sector in decades and “properly special”.<\/p>\n

“I can tell you that, having tried for many years to get people in the very heart of government,\u00a0particularly in No 10, to care about this issue, it’s amazing to see large numbers of people now doing everything they can,” he said.<\/p>\n

However, he added that the\u00a0Labour government could take additional steps to\u00a0boost its chances of success, including appointing\u00a0a “tsar or commissioner”.<\/p>\n

“Someone that knocks heads together across government, that\u00a0says: ‘By\u00a0the way, NHS, you’re discharging people onto the streets from A&Es.\u00a0Stop it’,” said Downie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“[Someone] who bangs heads together, gets organisations in our sector, in local government, housing associations to do the right thing.\u00a0That costs nothing, and they can just do it today.”<\/p>\n

The charity head\u00a0said that the issue of people falling into homelessness when discharged from hospitals and prisons is “outrageous”, but ultimately “solvable”.<\/p>\n

But he stressed that it’s “not just possible” to achieve the PM’s pledge without more housing, particularly housing specifically earmarked for people who are already homeless.<\/p>\n

It’s not about spending more money, but\u00a0“organising ourselves better”, Downie said, explaining that\u00a0homeless people should be guaranteed a\u00a0“good chunk” of properties built as part of the government’s \u00a338bn\u00a0Social and Affordable Homes Programme.<\/p>\n

Crisis is also calling for Burnham and Chancellor John Healey to unfreeze the\u00a0Local Housing Allowance (LHA) at the Budget next month, describing it as “the number one thing the government could do right now to send the numbers in the right direction”.<\/p>\n

LHA\u00a0limits how much Universal Credit\u00a0is paid to private renters.\u00a0It is meant to cover the cheapest 30 per cent\u00a0of private sector rents in each area, with\u00a0claimants whose rent is higher paying the shortfall themselves. However, a two-year freeze to its cash value by the Labour government has led\u00a0to a\u00a0real-terms cut because actual rents have risen in that time.<\/p>\n

As a result, the support is now worth less than\u00a0the 10th percentile of local rents in some areas, with many councils warning that the freeze is making rent\u00a0increasingly unaffordable and pushing people into homelessness.<\/p>\n

Some Tory-run councils support ending the freeze, despite party leader Kemi Badenoch’s pledge to further reduce LHA.<\/p>\n

Downie also wants to see the PM act on his past\u00a0support for Housing First:\u00a0“the single most exciting thing he said on homelessness”.<\/p>\n

The scheme works on seven core principles, including\u00a0the right to a home; giving\u00a0individuals control over the type and location of their housing; and a focus on harm reduction,\u00a0with pilots in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool widely seen as successful.<\/p>\n

Labour considered including the nationwide\u00a0roll-out\u00a0of Housing First\u00a0in its 2024 election manifesto, but did not go ahead with it. Burnham previously told PoliticsHome\u00a0that the scheme had been key to his success in reducing rough sleeping numbers in Manchester.<\/p>\n

A Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson told\u00a0PoliticsHome:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe welcome the vital work that Crisis do to support people experiencing homelessness. The PM has made clear his determination to end rough sleeping at the earliest opportunity and to make sure the whole of government and society works together to fix this problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is backed by a National Plan to End Homelessness \u2013 which sets out how public services must work together to tackle this complex issue, alongside a record investment of over \u00a34bn\u00a0to help thousands of people leave the streets behind, move into secure homes and get the support they need to rebuild their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

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5 min read21 September Andy Burnham should appoint a homelessness tsar to help\u00a0with his pledge to end rough sleeping, according to the head of a leading homelessness charity. Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, told PoliticsHome that the Prime Minister needs someone\u00a0who\u00a0“knocks heads together” across Whitehall and\u00a0improves coordination\u00a0inside and outside government\u00a0when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}