Andy Burnham declared a crackdown on rough sleeping as one of his top priorities within hours of crossing the threshold in Downing Street as new Prime Minister.

Yet swathes of London – including UK's main railway gateway to the world – are thronged by record numbers of people homeless and in squalor, many with drug and alcohol addictions.

King's Cross, for many years notorious as a red light zone with streets occupied by prostitutes, skeletal heroin addicts and kerb crawlers, has lately been celebrated as 'gentrified'.

But homeless people still now sit and slump, post signs begging for donations and leave human waste on the streets beside historic transport hubs and new tech HQs.

Figures show more than 1,000 new rough sleepers' 'last settled base' was in asylum seekers' accommodation, up from 10 per cent the previous year – while 946 rough sleepers were undocumented and in Britain illegally.

People from minority ethnic backgrounds form the majority – 53 per cent – of London's rough sleepers

Sprawling camps of rough sleepers in tents, sleeping bags or simply what tattered clothes they wear are seen strewn across the heart of England's capital.

Bases mainly 'home' to Eastern European migrants have been a regular presence either side of Euston Road, bordering Soho in central London and within the Holborn and St Pancras constituency of recently deposed ex-PM Sir Keir Starmer.

King's Cross and neighbouring St Pancras stations – the latter the country's Eurostar terminal for trips across the Channel and given a multi-million-pound makeover two decades ago – are also surrounded by people sleeping on the streets.

The current scenes come as a contrast to this century's 'gentrification' of King's Cross with the arrival of multinationals including Google and canalside developments such as Granary Square and Coal Drops Yard boasting luxury brand stores.

Yet the homelessness problems all too evident nearby – and neighbouring Euston station – are replicated across London, including in affluent areas such as Kensington within striking distance of billionaires' mansions as well as Covent Garden.

But not long afterwards, his prized place beside a cash machine was taken by a 30-year-old Romanian giving his name as Vali, saying he had been in London for three years without a home.

Mick White, 58, opened another 9am beer can outside that main rail terminal at King's Cross – celebrating the 'kindness of strangers' for the donation of a four-pack.

Former heroin and crack addict Serena Goff – aged 42 yet looking gaunt and drawn and several decades older – scampered back and forth across Pancras Road.

And 29-year-old Brandon Crozier, homeless and relying on occasional hostel overnight stays, scurried inside and outside King's Cross station – while criticising how many London properties remain unused while many people stay on the streets.

More than 13,000 people were found to be sleeping rough across London last year, a new high – 10 per cent up on the previous 12 months and four times as many as 16 years ago. 

Joe Shalam, policy director at the Centre for Social Justice think-tank, said: 'You cannot solve London’s rough sleeping crisis without grappling with sky-high levels of immigration.

'More than half of rough sleepers in the capital are not British, and too many people are being left stranded on the streets with no realistic route out.

'We welcome the Prime Minister's emphasis on ending rough sleeping for good, but to do so he must remove those with no right to remain, offer voluntary return and Dutch-style reconnection support to migrant rough sleepers, and roll out Housing First to help the most vulnerable British rough sleepers off the streets for good.'

One in four of the capital's rough sleepers have been seen on the streets for at least two successive years, compared to one in five two years earlier, the CJS added. 

And the number of Britons seen sleeping rough rose from 2024-2025, with an extra 13 this year – with a longer-term increase of 1,521, or 38 per cent, since 2021-22.

Restore Britain leader and Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe said: 'Our capital city in parts resembles a filthy shanty town populated by drunk foreigners. A Restore Britain Government will deport them all.'

The homelessness charity Crisis has described the capital's rough sleeper problem as 'simply shameful', adding: 'Years of rising homelessness has desensitised us to the stark reality that thousands of people have nowhere safe to stay and have to sleep on the streets.'

The charity Trust for London says men make up the majority of rough sleepers across the capital, 82 per cent, although the number of women has trebled since 2011-2012. 

White people are the largest single ethnic group of rough sleepers – 5,567, according to researchers, while the proportion of rough sleepers who are white has fallen from 71 per cent in 2011-2012 to 46 per cent last year.

People from minority ethnic backgrounds form the majority – 53 per cent – of London's rough sleepers – while black people make up 27 per cent, up from 13 per cent a decade ago and 15 per cent five years ago.

Romanian rough sleeper Vali sat disconsolate beside a sign saying: 'I am very hungry - good bless you.'  

He said: 'This is all I can do' – though also praised passers-by for handing him money.

While apologising for his lack of English, he described trying to get enough to stay overnight in hostels before returning to the open air.

Meanwhile, Mr Crozier was more voluble and urged that more attention be paid to all those struggling on the streets.

He told the Daily Mail of being without a home since he was 17, then moving from Hatfield in Hertfordshire to his present vagrant life in London.

Mr Crozier told of suffering from mental health problems but no drug issues, while saying how he was concerned about how many addicts who 'can't get off their own two feet'.

He described recently deposed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as 'a kn**' yet gave some optimism towards Mr Burnham's recent words on rough sleeping.

Mr Crozier said: 'I respect that - you've got to give him a chance.

'I've seen 16 people die this year. There just isn't enough help.

'And a lot of empty, derelict buildings around London just aren't being used. I'm angry about the system.'

Meanwhile, drug addict Serena Goff spoke about living on the streets for ten years.

Ms Goff, previously from Romford in Essex, said: 'It's a struggle. But my council helpers are nice - they understand. People are nice.

'I've just got clean - of crack and heroin. Lots of people are like that on the streets.'

Elsewhere, just outside a London Underground entrance to King's Cross station, Mick White was sitting on a bench with a four-pack of beer.

He told of being homeless for the past ten years, having moved to London from Newcastle, though also praised hostels in the city offering overnight accommodation. 

He said: 'They've been good. People are friendly too. They give me money, they buy me beers like these.'

Latest statistics from the charity Trust For London show the London borough of Westminster has by far the largest number of rough sleepers – 2,612 at last count, up 24.2 per cent on the previous year's 2,102.

That is more than double the next in the list, Camden – which takes in parts of the West End including Tottenham Court Road where rough sleepers have had their tents, sleeping bags and other possessions seized by council contractors.

Camden's rough sleeper count, according to Trust For London outreach workers, stood at 975 – an 8 per cent increase on 903 in 2023-2024.

Following on are the City of London, with 858 and a 33.8 increase on the previous year's 656, then Ealing with 723 – up by 1.8 per cent on 710 in 2023-2024. 

The local authority in the capital with the fifth-most rough sleepers, according to the study, was Southwark, with 613-11.7 per cent higher than the previous year's 549. 

Lowest on the list are Sutton, with 43, Havering's 56, 81 in Merton, Richmond on Thames's 85 and 94 in Harrow. 

And across the city, 13,321 people were seen sleeping rough in 2024-2025 – quadruple the amount 16 years earlier, Trust for London research suggests. 

Some 3,472 people were found to be sleeping rough back in 2008-2009.

Figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network last month show 3,959 people were recorded sleeping rough in London between April and June 2026.

This is down by 10 per cent on the previous year but up by 53 per cent on the same period five years ago, when a Covid-related 'Everyone In' scheme saw rough sleeping numbers fall drastically in London.

The latest figures amount to a rise of 47 per cent compared to ten years ago – while some 680 people were deemed to be 'living on the streets', an increase of 72 per cent related to the same period five years ago and 75 per cent from a decade back.

The housing charity Shelter also highlighted how, along with London's rough sleepers, 176,000 were 'stuck' in temporary accommodation. 

The organisation also said that women among those 'bedded down' on the capital's streets were more at risk of assault. 

A fresh spotlight on London's homelessness plight came after a woman said to have emerged from a homelessness centre allegedly stabbed four people.

Witnesses at the scene suggest the attacker, seen regularly in the area, left St Mungo’s homeless hostel shortly after 12noon before allegedly assaulting the men with 5in-long scissors.

After targeting the bystanders, a woman was ushered by police officers along nearby Short's Gardens before being arrested, after what police said they believed to be a 'mental health related incident'.

The injured men are aged 34, 39, 42 and 52, according to Scotland Yard, who said a pair of scissors was seized from the scene.

A large police cordon was put up from High Holborn to the St Mungo’s homeless centre in Endell Street, where officers were speaking to people before they entered the building. 

A spokesman for St Mungo’s homelessness charity, which works in the Endell Street area, said: 'Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by this distressing incident.

'We are working closely with emergency services to ensure that all of the people we support, in addition to our colleagues, are safe and accounted for.'

Stella Gollovena has been charged with four counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, the Met Police said after last Wednesday's attacks. 

Previously, thinking of Covent Garden might have people instinctively picturing the Royal Opera House or the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, both there for centuries.

Also coming to mind could be the neo-classical buildings that house both market traders' stalls and luxury brand stores – though the traditional fruit and veg merchants there departed three miles south-west to Nine Elms in 1974.

There was Audrey Hepburn as Cockney street florist Eliza Doolittle in the classic musical My Fair Lady – and back in the Restoration era, Charles II's orange-selling mistress Nell Gwyn who gives her name to a pub tucked in one of the area's alleys.

Covent Garden's grandeur was encapsulated in the base it also provided, between 1885 and 2019, to upmarket journal The Lady – pastiched as Milady's Boudoir, based in a 'rummy street' there, in PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories.

Buskers including pan-pipers, 'living statues', magicians and string quartets perform in streets, squares and arcades nestled near The Strand, Trafalgar Square and Soho.

Yet local residents and traders now say bleaker conditions now brood over one of the capital's most historic districts – with concerns over muggers, rough sleepers and drug addicts, and now a stabbing spree carried out last week.

The most recent Metropolitan Police figures say 514 crimes were reported in the Holborn and Covent Garden area in June this year – up by 16.8 per cent from January's 440.

The Daily Mail told last weekend of how grim rough sleeping scenes were causing concern in Covent Garden, within Westminster council borders.

And shop owners revealed they kept knives under their desks due to feeling unsafe. 

New PM Mr Burnham made combating rough sleeping across the UK one of his key aims in speeches during his first week in Downing Street last month. 

He said on July 20, on his arrival at No10, he would 'finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK at the earliest opportunity'.

Mr Burnham later added: ‘For too long, we've been told that ending rough sleeping will take decades or even that it's impossible. I'm not having that. This is something a government can fix if it chooses to. Today, I'm choosing to.

'We'll get to work immediately, bringing together national and local government with the investment needed to get it done.

'This is the kind of Britain I want us to be – a country where everyone has the security of a roof over their head, and where no one is left behind or written off. Let's bring back hope.' 

Official data showed how rough sleeping more than doubled in Greater Manchester over Mr Burnham's last four years as its mayor.

This saw the number of rough sleepers across Greater Manchester rise to 197 last year, from 90 in 2021.

And rough sleeping figures in 2025 were the second highest since Mr Burnham was elected mayor in 2017, despite numbers trending downwards to 2021. 

This is despite his 2017 manifesto to be Greater Manchester's mayor planning to end rough sleeping by 2020.

The figures were collected in the annual rough sleeping snapshot, with England's local authorities counting the amount of rough sleepers on an agreed night in November. 

Separate figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government showed there were about 360 rough sleepers in March 2026 in the ten local authorities that make up Greater Manchester – up from 335 in March last year.

The city now has the third highest rate of homelessness in the country – after Birmingham and London – according to housing charity Shelter.

One in 74 Greater Manchester residents were without a permanent home, relying on emergency accommodation, sofa surfing or sleeping rough.

The Daily Mail also reported in recent days about the tent camps of mostly Romanian and Bulgarian migrants either side of Euston Road, near Euston, King's Cross and St Pancras stations.

They have been there for the past four years – with local shopkeepers complaining of resultant thefts and sights of people not only bathing but also relieving themselves in the streets.  

More than 40 tents perched on the central reservation of the capital's arterial Euston Road are home to dozens of people who fly in from Romania and Bulgaria. 

One exasperated local shopkeeper last week told the Daily Mail: 'They steal alcohol and solvents from my shop on a daily basis – I've lost hundreds, if not thousands, in business as a result.

'It's been going on for about three years when they arrived in the summer of 2023. We ring the police - they've come a few times but it doesn't stop what is happening. 

'You call them out and they get very aggressive - they hate you filming them. They scream, "No video!", as they're putting a bottle of vodka or brandy down their trousers. It's driving me mad and I feel quite helpless.

'Other shops have got security because of how bad it's got. We can't afford that, we're just a newsagent – what are we meant to do?'

The majority of the camp are understood to be from Romania and Bulgaria, but the site has also housed a handful of other homeless nationalities – including British and Ukrainian people who had fallen on hard times.

While most people at the camp refused to talk, two were happy to speak.

Maria, from the Romanian city of Timișoara, claimed she had come to the UK for a 'better life' and alleged she had only been in the camp for a month.

In an explanation as to why she was in Britain, she alleged that 'wicked' Camden Council, the local authority, had failed to find her permanent housing.

It was unclear whether she was in the UK legally or why she believed she had a right to housing.

Asked why she was in the UK, she claimed: 'There are no possibilities, no housing in Romania. I am homeless. That's why I am here.

'[Camden Council] are wicked, they are not helping me find housing and they are now on holiday. I'm not happy, I cry, I am always very stressed. I don't want to be here.'

The Daily Mail also met Hamide, an illegal immigrant who had left Sudan in 2020 and lived across Europe, working in France as a plumber before arriving in Britain on a dinghy several years ago.

The 43-year-old had lived in a London migrant hotel for a year and ten months before either being removed or checking himself out.

St Mungo's homeless charity later offered him help but he said he had checked out of the hostel in Victoria they placed him in and he has been living in a tent on the side of the road ever since.

Hamide, who said his asylum claim was ongoing with a solicitor, claimed: 'The hostel was no good, I was not happy. I live in a tent because I have no one to help me.

'Yes, I am illegal in this country. I am trying to get settled status here but I have a problem so I now have a solicitor.'

The Euston encampment, which now spreads across two central reservation sections along Euston Road, began in August 2022.

It is understood Sir Keir Starmer, as local MP, has made representations to Transport for London, Camden Council and the Metropolitan Police about the camp.

There has also been criticism of how Tottenham Court Road, running on to Oxford Street - one of the country's busiest shopping hubs - has been dubbed 'Tent City'. 

The Daily Mail footage showed a ramshackle 'village' of tents along the central London street close to the University College Hospital complex that was recently subject to a prestigious rebuild costing more than £200million.

Colombian national Cesar Rodriguez, 49, said living in a tent here became a necessity after losing his cash-in-hand job as a cleaner.

He told the Daily Mail: 'I love Britain and the English culture. The people are great. This is why I chose to come here 25 years ago.

'My father was killed by criminals in Colombia at 45 and it was no longer safe for me.

'I have been welcomed in with open arms. I have worked the whole time I've been here, until last year when I lost my job.

'I've been on the streets ever since. Tomorrow is my birthday. But I refuse to be unhappy.'

Cesar, who used to live in Crouch Hill, north London, says living at the site is 'miserable' but he chose the option of 'safety in numbers'.

Previous attempts to live in a tent alone saw him moved on by businesses and the authorities.

Cesar added: 'The Government needs to be more fair in who gets to stay - they are still working on my status and it means I cannot work [legally].

'But they are doing so much for foreigners who don't care about this great country. The new foreigners coming here are taking the p***.

'English people can't even get accommodation. There are just too many foreign people. Some of them have had to resort to living here.

'It's not safe here, especially at night. But what can you do. There's times where I've had to call the police because of robberies that I've seen.

'This is currently my only option. My brother was killed back home last year. I have nowhere else to go.

'I speak four languages and have a record of working for years. All I want is the chance to get my life back on track.'

A Daily Mail visit to the area last December found council workers at the scene wearing hi-vis jackets and taking photos but making no attempt to move any of the individuals on.

A mixed group of migrants sat outside a local McDonald's begging before returning to the tents later in the day.

Back at the campsite, a large orange commercial bin was seen full of suitcases, discarded clothes and pizza boxes.

Pauline Fox, 58, who travels from north London to work in a nearby department store, said she felt unsafe when walking past the tents.

She told the Daily Mail: 'We have no idea who is staying in these tents. There's basic checks on accommodation in this country, but not here.

'I've been stared at walking past here and it makes me feel uncomfortable.'

The Met Police previously apologised for a crackdown that saw homeless tents thrown into bin trucks, with Sir Mark Rowley admitting the force acted 'unlawfully'.

A letter from the force's lawyers admitted it was wrong for unlawfully ordering homeless people to move from outside of a hospital in an incident which saw several of their tents destroyed. 

Footage filmed in north London in November 2023 showed binmen wearing hi-vis jackets with Camden council branding appearing to destroy the tents on an evening where temperatures plummeted as low as four degrees.

A man was arrested for refusing to leave the area and had his belongings and tent thrown away while he was in custody.

Backed by homelessness charity Streets Kitchen and human rights campaign group Liberty, he threatened legal action against the Met on the grounds that dispersal orders should not stop people from accessing their homes.

He claimed their 'inhumane' actions breached his human rights and put both him and the others living in tents on the street at risk of harm.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson has said this month of the Euston Road camps: 'The Safer Neighbourhood Team are aware of the congregation of rough sleepers and are working closely with partners to find a long-term solution.

'We would encourage anyone who believes they have witnessed criminal activity to contact the police via 101 or online, so the matter can be investigated.'

A Camden Council spokesperson said: 'We are concerned for the welfare of people rough sleeping here and our urgent focus is to help rebuild their lives away from the streets. 

'This means finding suitable accommodation and providing the range of support they need, while working with community partners to make sure the area is safe and maintained for everyone.'

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now told the Daily Mail: 'The Prime Minister has set out a bold ambition to end homelessness and rough sleeping at the earliest opportunity, turning the tide on one of the starkest injustices in London and across the country.

'We're investing almost £4billion to support this ambition and fund vital support services including £846million for London, and will deliver the biggest long-term boost to social and affordable housing in a generation to support more people into stable homes.'

Matt Downie, chief executive of housing charity Crisis, welcomed Mr Burnham's recent pledge on tackling rough sleeping, though added: 'Over the past decade, unaffordable private rents and a chronic shortage of social housing have caused homelessness to skyrocket across the country. 

'Local councils are spending billions of pounds every year on temporary accommodation which keeps people locked in a cycle of instability.

'The Prime Minister now has a unique opportunity to pave a new path for fixing this problem by taking an approach that prioritises giving people secure homes over temporary fixes.

'Crisis stands ready to help in the delivery of this. Making homes more affordable by restoring housing benefit so it reflects the actual cost of private renting will be crucial to the success of this plan.

'Through the right policies, we can see change. Now is our chance to end rough sleeping.'