England faces 25% homelessness surge as Burnham plans mass council building
Record homelessness is pushing English councils toward bankruptcy, prompting incoming prime minister Andy Burnham to promise the largest council housebuilding programme since the postwar era.
Andy Burnham has been warned that an additional 50,000 people in England will become homeless by 2030 without a radical shift in government policy. Projections from IPPR North and the charity Crisis, shared with the incoming prime minister’s leadership team, show the current record levels rising 25% to surpass 230,000 people within four years.
The financial strain on local authorities is driving the urgency of the situation. Councils are being "pushed closer to bankruptcy as billions are spent on costly, ineffective temporary accommodation," according to the upcoming report. National government spending on homelessness reached £3.8bn last year, more than double the amount spent in 2010.
Most of those funds are absorbed by a ballooning temporary housing bill. Local government spending on hostels and refuges surged from £70.3m in 2009-10 to at least £1.3bn in 2024-25. This system offers no genuine pathway out of homelessness, yet it continues to drain municipal budgets at high nightly rates.
Burnham, who is expected to take office on 20 July, has pledged the "biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period". He has also told advisers he wants to see a rapid fall in rough sleeping within months of taking power, shifting away from temporary fixes.
The IPPR North and Crisis analysis advocates for a national rollout of Burnham’s "A Bed Every Night" scheme from Greater Manchester. It also urges urgent measures to repurpose long-term empty homes, aiming to reduce the reliance on expensive B&Bs and hostels that currently house more than 180,000 people.
Britain’s record homelessness stems from an acute shortage of affordable housing, particularly in London where housing allowances have failed to match soaring rents. The current government of Keir Starmer has promised to build 1.5m homes by August 2029, including a "generational increase" in social housing.
Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, said it would be "madness" for ministers to continue "spending billions of pounds trapping people in homelessness and getting terrible outcomes". He added: "I’ve never seen anyone that is on the brink of being a prime minister even talk about homelessness, let alone have a deep knowledge about how it can and should be tackled."
