The BBC has asked whether Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, can solve the housing crisis, in a video feature tagged under social housing, housing, Andy Burnham, and the Labour Party (BBC News, 17 July 2026). A companion article by the BBC's policy correspondent Ben Chu was published the previous day (BBC News, 16 July 2026).

The scrutiny of Burnham's housing record comes against a worsening national backdrop. The number of new homes started in England fell from 207,000 to 139,000 after Labour took office, according to BBC News reporting from December 2025 (BBC News, 8 December 2025). On the same date, Housing Secretary Steve Reed said a sharp rise in housebuilding is needed to hit the government's target of 1.5 million homes, and housebuilders told ministers the target would be missed.

The figures support those warnings. FullFact estimates a net addition of 342,100 homes in England between 9 July 2024 and 15 March 2026 — roughly 22.8 per cent of the 1.5 million target (FullFact, 5 May 2026). An internal Ministry of Housing assessment obtained by The Times in March 2026 found the government expects to fall significantly short of the goal (The Times, 29 March 2026). The Guardian reported in April that the Iran war has created macroeconomic uncertainty, leading Barratt Redrow, the UK's biggest housebuilder, to trim its purchases of new land, further denting the 1.5 million target for England (The Guardian, 15 April 2026).

Burnham's own housing programme in Greater Manchester is well established. In May 2024 he pledged 10,000 new council homes by 2028 as part of plans to tackle the housing crisis (GMCA, 7 May 2024). On the same day, the BBC reported Burnham's call to suspend the Right to Buy scheme — the policy allowing council tenants to buy their home at a discount — which he said is making the housing crisis "worse every year" (BBC News, 7 May 2024). Greater Manchester subsequently announced a UK-first landlord charter in July 2024 as part of stepped-up plans to improve rental sector standards (GMCA, 12 July 2024), and the combined authority has published a "New Deal for Renters" page outlining a goal to bring all rented homes in Greater Manchester up to the Government's decent homes standard (GMCA).

In June 2026, during BBC live coverage, Burnham said the country is "in a housing trap" and described the crisis as having a "ruinous" impact (BBC News, 29 June 2026). His ten-year vision for Greater Manchester, set out in July 2025, aimed to deliver "our best decade since the Victorian era" (GMCA, 9 July 2025).

The government has not stood still on planning reform. A gov.uk news release in December 2024 outlined a planning system overhaul described as a plan to "accelerate housebuilding and deliver 1.5 million homes over this Parliament" (gov.uk, 12 December 2024). A year later, the government published a release titled "Housing Sec pledges to go further than ever before to hit 1.5 million homes," calling it "another major step forward in the government's unrelenting focus to build 1.5 million high-quality homes" (gov.uk, 16 December 2025). The MHCLG media blog had already pushed back in October 2025 against coverage questioning the target's achievability and raising concerns about the Office for Budget Responsibility (MHCLG, 29 October 2025).

Steve Reed has pointed to planning law changes as the source of "green shoots" in the latest housing supply figures, writing on the MHCLG blog on 15 January 2026: "I said I will build 1.5 million homes and I meant it" (MHCLG blog, 15 January 2026). The government's official housing supply indicators, published on 19 June 2026, cover new supply in England for January to March 2026 and reference the 1.5 million homes target (gov.uk, 19 June 2026).

The broader context here is one of real tension between central and local Labour on housing delivery. The 1.5 million homes target is an England-only commitment; housing policy is devolved to Holyrood (the Scottish Parliament), the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament), and Stormont (the Northern Ireland Assembly). Burnham's combined-authority-level interventions, including his call to suspend Right to Buy, put him in a different policy conversation from ministers in Whitehall, who have not adopted that position. His 10,000 council homes pledge by 2028 is a discrete, measurable commitment against which progress can be tracked independently of the national figures.

The broader question the BBC's feature poses is whether a metro mayor — a directly elected regional leader with devolved powers — can use planning powers and a council-building programme to outpace a national delivery trajectory that, on FullFact's accounting, has reached less than a quarter of its parliamentary target. The answer matters not only for Greater Manchester but for the wider devolution settlement: if combined authorities can show measurable housing delivery where central government is struggling, the case for deeper devolution of housing powers strengthens. If they cannot, the argument that the problem is structural rather than territorial gains weight.