Andy Burnham used his first speech as Prime Minister to pledge “to end rough sleeping in our country” – a mammoth task which requires “a significant shift away from a series of expensive temporary fixes”, according to the charity Crisis.
Before King Charles invited him to form a government, Mr Burnham spent the morning at The Passage, an organisation helping the homeless population of London, which has Prince William as its Patron.
It’s famous as the location Princess Diana brought her eldest son when he was a boy, and last December the future King brought Prince George along to help serve Christmas lunch.
The issue of homelessness, however, runs deeper than a standard patronage for Prince William.
In 2023, he launched Homewards: a five-year project, producing six blueprints in target locations across the UK, to demonstrate homelessness can be ended – making the issue rare, brief and unrepeated.
By coincidence, a certain Mayor of Greater Manchester supported the prince and his Royal Foundation through the launch.
Andy Burnham told the BBC in 2023: “I think it’s a tremendous development to be honest that The Prince of Wales would show this leadership on this particular issue.
“I think it will give a real sense of hope for everybody who’s working to support people who are homeless.
Is Prince William about to team up with Andy Burnham to tackle homelessness?
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“They will feel seen today, and they will feel that their work matters, because that endorsement has come from the prince.
“But also everybody who worries about homelessness. Anybody who’s at risk of homelessness. Everybody who is homeless I think today will feel seen too.
“I think this is a real positive move by The Prince and the Royal Foundation and in Greater Manchester we’re going to be supporting the Royal Foundation with all of their work.”
Representatives of Prince William’s project met with Mr Burnham recently to discuss early homelessness prevention in Manchester, particularly successes in an Upstream pilot that is being tested in the northern city and Homewards locations.
Before King Charles invited him to form a government, Andy Burnham spent the morning at The Passage, an organisation helping the homeless population of London, which has Prince William as its Patron
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Those contributions in the Homewards locations (Sheffield, Newport, Lambeth, Aberdeen, Northern Ireland, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole) were also invited to join the International Mayor’s Council on Homelessness, of which Mr Burnham served as Chair during his time as Mayor of Greater Manchester.
It is understood the Homewards team continue to speak regularly to colleagues from the Greater Manchester Homelessness Action Network and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
As Prince of Wales, the future King remains above politics, and has previously stated that “homelessness is a complex societal issue” requiring public, private and charity sectors working together to fix it.
Could we see a potential collaboration between the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister? Royal aides have not ruled it out.
This sort of teamwork isn’t without precedent; last year King Charles took former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner on a tour of his sustainable housing project, Nansledan, in Cornwall.
At the time, the Prime Minister’s spokesman insisted the King was remaining above politics, and a royal source suggested the engagement was to highlight their joint interest in housing.
Collab or no collab, ending homelessness is a mammoth task, and Mr Burnham could not entirely solve the issue in Manchester.
Official figures published last year by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority showed the number of people seen sleeping rough on a single night in Greater Manchester rose by 3.4 per cent to 154 in autumn 2024 from 149 in 2023.
Last year King Charles took former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner on a tour of his sustainable housing project, Nansledan, in Cornwall
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The authority said this was still below 268 at the peak in 2017.
As Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham pledged to donate 15 per cent of his salary to the “A Bed Every Night” programme to help bring rough sleepers in off the streets.
Yesterday, he suggested the “Everyone In” scheme, where thousands of rough sleepers were brought in off the streets during the Covid-19 pandemic, could be repeated.
Downing Street has announced £340million will go towards acquiring 1,200 suitable homes and supporting at least 3,000 rough sleepers “without delay” over a five-year period – funded by uncommitted money from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government budgets.
However, rough sleeping is only one form of homelessness; more than 100,000 households are in temporary accommodation across the country.
Official figures from London suggest around a fifth of the capital’s new rough sleepers are people who had last been in asylum accommodation.
The issue is complex, but it is clear the heir to the throne and the new Prime Minister share a passion to solve the systemic issue.
Let’s see if the Prince of Wales’ convening power, combined with the political will of the new Prime Minister, will have any impact.