Burnham pledges £442m to end rough sleeping in England by Christmas

The PM said he wants to get everyone in for the holidays

Why the rough sleeping figures matter

Official data counted an estimated 4,793 rough sleepers on a single night in England in the autumn of 2025.

This figure shows that around a 96 per cent rise of people sleeping rough in five years.

That said, the annual snapshot is seen as significantly undercounting the problem.

This is partly due to the strict collection rules when conducting such observations.

Burnham isn't the first PM to want to get rough sleepers into homes, with the previous Conservative government pledging to end rough sleeping by 2024.

Burnham, who has spent years donating a share of his salary to a homelessness charity, is framing the scheme as a national drive led by local leaders rather than a Whitehall handout.

Shadow housing secretary James Cleverly said there was "little detail" about how the initiative would be paid for or delivered.

Chloe, 27, from London, who slept in parks after leaving the care system, told BBC News that no rough sleeper would turn down a bed if it came with the right support.

However, she warned that hidden homelessness and sofa-surfing had been "normalised".

The test is whether a Christmas deadline can shift a number that has almost doubled in five years.