Andy Burnham has vowed to change national politics after his decisive win at the Makerfield by-election sets up a showdown with Sir Keir Starmer at Westminster.
The Labour leadership hopeful said the party had a “final chance to change” after he won nearly 55 per cent of the vote in the seat – defeating Reform UK by more than 9,000 votes.
Housing, as Burnham has made clear in two exclusive interviews with The i Paper, has been a key policy area during his time as Greater Manchester mayor.
So what does Burnham record in Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs tell us about how he could look to shape housing across the country if he makes it to No 10?
What is Manchester’s housing situation?
Just after Labour’s massive general election landslide in July 2024, Burnham told The i Paper he was worried about rising housing costs in Manchester.
“Housing is a risk to growth,” Burnham said. “If people can’t find places to rent, they won’t move here because it’s too difficult to live.”
This, he warned, could have a devastating “London effect” in Greater Manchester. “Nothing against London, but we don’t want people to be priced out of housing here”, he added.
If you look at Manchester’s housing crisis in numbers, it may not appear quite as bad as London’s, but when you consider the cost of renting and buying in the city, where the average income is somewhere between £33,000 and £38,000, it becomes clear that, relative to what Mancunians earn, it’s still serious.
The average house price in Manchester was £248,000 in March 2026. That’s 6.5 times the average salary.
Private rents in Manchester rose to an average of £1,349 in April 2026, an annual increase of 3.0 per cent from £1,309 in April 2025. This, however, was lower than the rise in rents across the North West (5.8 per cent) as a whole.
Homelessness has also been a big problem in the GMCA in recent years. In Greater Manchester, temporary accommodation usage has nearly doubled since 2019, with approximately 5,915 households (including 8,600 children) living in temporary housing. Additionally, a single-night snapshot recorded 154 people sleeping rough.
Burnham’s policies in Manchester for renters
When it comes to private renting, shortly after taking office, Burnham launched his Good Landlord Charter across the region which set out good practices, stipulated that landlords should keep homes “affordable” and, crucially, made funding available for landlords to retrofit their properties and improve accessibility for disabled people.
Burnham also took on “rogue landlords” by proposing measures to allow councils in his area to compulsorily purchase sub-standard homes from private landlords who refused to bring their properties up to decent standards.
Like London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Burnham has also repeatedly called for the central Government to give local mayors the power to implement rent controls in their area. However, he was never given the power to do this in the GMCA by central Government.
What are Burnham’s housebuilding policies?
As post-war deindustrialisation hit the city of Manchester, its population fell from 766,311 in 1931 to 392,819 by 2001. Within the actual city centre, the resident population (now close to 100,000) was only around 500 in 1990.
Building new housing, particularly glossy high-rise apartments in glass skyscrapers, has played a big role in Manchester’s changing fortunes.
Housebuilding has remained strong under Burnham’s leadership. 3,864 new homes were built in Manchester in 2024-25, an increase of 28 per cent in the previous year.
As of 2025, it had around 12,000 homes under construction and another 7,500 with planning permission. 99.8 per cent of homes completed in 2024-25 were on brownfield land, and over 80 per cent were close to public transport.
Much of this is down to the work of developers and local council officials, as well as the Greater Manchester Housing Investment Fund: a £300m government-backed loan fund that has facilitated approximately 11,000 new homes since it was created in 2015. Since taking office in 2017, Burnham has overseen this.
However, it has been criticised by some for not focusing on social or affordable housing.
In May 2024, Burnham also pledged to build 10,000 new council homes by 2028.
In a recent interview with The Social Housing Podcast, Burnham praised former Labour housing secretary Angela Rayner for securing £39bn over 10 years for social housebuilding, but said: “We continue to argue for the maximum to be devoted to social housing. I would actually devote all of it to social housing.”
And, in 2025, he launched the £1bn Manchester Good Growth Fund, which has backed housing and infrastructure schemes across Greater Manchester. This is widely seen as an example of how state-backed investment can kick-start projects which will grow the economy. This is sometimes called “Manchesterism”.
With an annual growth rate of 3.1 per cent, Manchester’s economy has performed twice as well as that of the UK as a whole.
What about Burnham’s homelessness policies?
Just before Christmas, Burnham spoke exclusively to The i Paper about his plans to reduce the number of families with children living in temporary accommodation.
He announced that local councils in the GMCA would get £11.7m to buy thousands of empty homes to house homeless families.
Burnham said he was prepared to even use compulsory purchase orders to bring empty homes into public ownership.
“Hopefully we won’t have to go that far,” he said. “But we need to take a more interventionist stance.”
The policy is being introduced to curb rising temporary housing costs, which local councils say have pushed them into a “financial doom spiral”.
Speaking to The Social Housing Podcast, Burnham reiterated his belief that Housing First – a policy whereby people who are homeless are given a home before any other issues are addressed – should be a national policy in Britain.
“Since the 1980s, housing has increasingly been treated as a commodity to be bought and sold. If you see housing purely like that, you end up with a housing crisis – and that’s exactly where we are,” he said.
How would Burnham shape Westminster housing policy?
Burnham has already said that if he were to be appointed prime minister, he would oversee a mass programme of housebuilding like that implemented after the Second World War.
This was also hinted at by Angela Rayner, who promised a “council housebuilding revolution” during her time as housing secretary.
Based on Manchester’s skyscrapers, you also could expect Burnham to be pro-private developer and housebuilding.
On the whole, if he implemented similar policies to those he has brought in in Manchester, he would be, in his own words, “more interventionist” than the current Government.
That said, it’s worth noting that his interest in compulsory purchase is in line with current Government thinking, after it outlines plans for councils to use compulsory purchase powers to buy land if building on it is in “the public interest”.
“Everyone knows that politics isn’t working,” Burnham said in his victory speech after the Makerfield by-election win. “Tonight could, just could, be a turning point.”
Former cabinet minister Louise Haigh was among the Labour MPs calling on Starmer to “consider an orderly and managed transition” to make way for Burnham.
Starmer, who has insisted he will fight any leadership challenge, praised his rival’s victory. “Voters chose Labour’s campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate,” the PM said on social media.
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