'We're looking to another country to try and fix a problem blighting Greater Manchester'

Greater Manchester is looking overseas to fix a ‘fundamental’ problem which has blighted the region for ‘since the eighties’.

Andy Burnham is trying to gather momentum for his ‘housing first’ initiative, which he unveiled in his mayoral re-election bid earlier this year. Housing first is a ‘philosophy’ that gives people at risk of becoming homeless a place to live in an effort to prevent other issues from coming up, like being drawn into crime and repeated health woes.

A pilot of the same name ran in Greater Manchester from 2019 to 2022, and helped re-home 118 people in that time. Now, the mayor wants to rapidly expand the programme — and bring in employment support services, usually delivered via Job Centres, in order to create a coherent method of taking a rough sleeper and reboot their life.

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Foundational to housing first is a basic human right, Mr Burnham said as he hosted the Finnish ambassador to the UK this week in an effort on Tuesday (September 10).

“A good home should be a human right, enshrined in UK law. I would like every party to commit to a Grenfell Law.”

“It’s unjustifiable to have that [Grenfell] report and not change the way we think about housing... Parliament will be culpable if there’s no profound change in our thinking,” he went on.

But to make his ambitions a reality, Greater Manchester requires cash from the new government.

“We are submitting our spending proposal for the budget today,” Mr Burnham confirmed.

“As well as asking for ‘Housing First’ in its current form to be continued, we are looking at mainstreaming the philosophy of housing first to come right across Greater Manchester. We have put a spending proposal in to adopt