Andy Burnham issues homelessness warning as he criticises 'next day' evictions - The Mirror

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said homelessness is 'fixable' and blamed the Government for 'policies that actually create' homelessness

Andy Burnham has warned ministers they need to be more "radical" in their approach to tackling homelessness.

The Greater Manchester Mayor said homelessness is "fixable" and blamed the Government for “policies that actually create” homelessness.

Labour's new National Plan to End Homelessness today pledges to halve the number of people forced to sleep on the streets and end the scandal of families being trapped in B&Bs. The strategy, which is backed by £3.5billion in funding, includes plans to prevent more households from becoming homeless in the first place.

But Mr Burnham, who promised to end street homelessness in his area when he was elected in 2017 and has since seen a 42% drop, said the Government's national plans must go further.

The former Labour minister told ITV: “[The government] have given us more funding for homeless support, particularly employing social workers within the mix. So all of that is positive and we have had more funding into our system, but what I am saying is homelessness is fixable, it requires something more radical if you really want to fix it.

“If you go for that ‘housing first’ approach, ‘Everyone in’, a ‘Bed Every Night’, those type of approaches, in the end, in my view, you save money. And that's what I would encourage them to do. So I'm not saying they haven't done lots of good things. They have done lots of really important things. But from here, let's get into a more radical approach.

“I realise the pressures on the government, but there's a big national shift the government said it wants to see in the ten-year health plan, moving from treatment to prevention. This is the perfect policy.

“If you end rough sleeping, you are taking major steps to improve people's physical and mental health and put them then on a path to recovery. And I think that's what we should be committing to as a country.”

Mr Burnham took aim at Chancellor Rachel Reeve's decision to continue the freeze on housing benefit levels, which is blamed for pushing more people into homelessness. He also criticised the Home Office’s policy of evicting asylum seekers with little time to find new accommodation, which is pushing people onto the streets.

The time for asylum seekers to leave government-provided accommodation after they have been granted leave to remain has been halved from 56 days to 28 days. In September, more than 60 homelessness and asylum seeker organisations urged Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to reverse the policy.

Mr Burnham said: “It does feel that we are having to work around some of the problems created for us by the Westminster system. And I'd say it to any government of any colour.

“I'm going to be honest and say the task that we have faced has not been made any easier by the actions of the Home Office in recent times, and often the Home Office will take decisions with no reference to what it means for councils.

“Evicting people with very, very short notice. People, who've been given settled status, but then are just literally evicted the next day and unsurprisingly, they haven't got anywhere to go. That has been really frustrating. It began under the last government, and this government has made some moves to stop that, but it's still a difficult, difficult situation.”

Homelessness minister Alison McGovern told GMB: “Let me just address what Andy said directly because government does need to work together to make sure that we prevent homelessness. That's why there's a new goal to increase the rate at which we prevent people who might become homeless actually ending up on the streets or without a home. So this strategy takes on that very point. And we have taken steps, as I said, through the child poverty strategy, to increase family incomes, and we know that that will have a difference in preventing families becoming homeless.”