The Housing Secretary said she was confident everyone sleeping rough on the streets will receive an offer of somewhere to stay this winter – a pledge made by Andy Burnham
Angela Rayner said she was confident everyone sleeping rough on the streets will receive an offer of somewhere to stay this winter(Image: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock)
Andy Burnham’s major drive to cut rough sleeping will save lives this Christmas, Angela Rayner has said.
The Housing Secretary said she was confident everyone sleeping rough on the streets will receive an offer of somewhere to stay this winter – a pledge made by the new Prime Minister in the summer.
During an event hosted by the housing charity Crisis, Ms Rayner, said Mr Burnham, who has made ending rough sleeping his personal mission, had raised the issue at Cabinet earlier this week.
She said: “I said to the Cabinet and I said to the Prime Minister, you will save lives this Christmas.”
Discussing the pledge to all rough sleepers an offer of a bed this winter, Ms Rayner added on Wednesday: “I’m confident that everyone will receive an offer this Christmas. I’m very confident we’re in that position.
“But it can’t just be about a Christmas offer, and we know that some of the reasons why people are rough sleeping are quite entrenched. Not everyone will accept that offer. So this can’t just be for one Christmas or for a couple of months. We have to sustain it and we have to build on it.”
Ms Rayner later said it would not mean there would be no rough sleepers on the streets over the festive period. She told journalists: “I’m not confident you won’t see any rough sleepers, I’m confident that everyone will have an offer. I can’t literally drag people in off the street, but what we can do is make sure that people have an offer and have a route off the street.”
The Housing Secretary’s comments came as Crisis launched a major new report warning the costs of homelessness to central and local government stands at around £5billion per year.
The report warned: “The vast majority of public spending goes not on solving the problem, but on attempting to manage it. At least £2.9billion is swallowed by temporary accommodation every year – a figure that rose by nearly a quarter in a single year and will rise further if the approach to tackling homelessness does not change.”
Among its recommendations, Crisis has called for a new homelessness and rough sleeping unit at the heart of government.
They said: “As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has made ending rough sleeping a personal mission. Establishing a homelessness and rough sleeping unit at the heart of government to drive forward that mission, empowering and enabling local areas to deliver it, will be key to its success.”
Asked about such a unit, Ms Rayner said: “The Prime Minister is the biggest champion in what’s happening. Whenever I see him, he asks me where it’s up to. Whilst that’s not a formal process I think that is much more valuable than anything else.”
She also said she had a dashboard to track key departmental targets, and that some, such as in housebuilding, had been sent off kilter by “international headwinds” and rising construction and steel costs.
She said: “The frustration in Government is you sometimes don’t make as much progress as you want as quickly as you want because it can grind sometimes. Especially for housing, for example – it’s like turning the Titanic.” She added: “We’re starting to see some green shoots like housing starts, the numbers are up. Last year was the biggest amount of council house building since 1991.”
