Yo-yo homes, 10Foot and autism assessments: This is how Big Issue made change in 2025

It has been a curious year, restive and unresolved. A Trumpian worldview captured global leaders, and right-wing rhetoric is on the rise nationally. People on the margins and with the least are frequently overlooked and demonised. Big Issue has always sought to be on the side of those without, to amplify voices, provide opportunity and to challenge on behalf of those who could use a hand up. Here’s how it played out in 2025 – across all our work. 

How Big Issue’s journalism changed lives

Big Issue delivers agenda-setting interviews with some of the biggest names in politics, culture and business. But we also provide a platform for voices that wouldn’t be heard elsewhere – and we get involved when they need to punch through red tape or to get beyond deaf ears. Here are a few:

Jason, a wheelchair user and Big Issue vendor, was caught in a bureaucratic nightmare for more than 20 years trying to get an accessible home. In the summer, we told his story, building on our reporting that has exposed how thousands of disabled people live in properties not suitable for their needs. We will carry on advocating on behalf of Jason, and others who need a platform and help to make their voice heard.

Positive changes are happening. The Renters’ Rights Act passed in late autumn year and will come into force on May 1, 2026, finally. We have campaigned for some of the positive change it is aiming to deliver, especially around the end to no fault evictions. At the same time, Awaab’s Law will lead to greater protections against damp and mould in social housing. It’s terrible that it took the death of little Awaab Ishak, who died from mould exposure, to make this happen. But it allows Big Issue to mobilise the support of people like our ambassador Kwajo Tweneboa to get stuck in, to investigate and change lives.

We continue to investigate the hidden toll of nitazenes, a new synthetic opioid killing people on the streets and in homelessness hostels, after being the first place to identify its deadly toll, particularly on homeless people. Two police forces, Suffolk and Greater Manchester, had refused to give their frontline officers the choice to carry naloxone – a life-saving drug which can reverse overdoses. This was despite it saving hundreds of lives when other forces had allowed officers the option. Our story led to renewed scrutiny from politicians. Stockport MP Navendu Mishra raised the issue with the Home Office, while Cheadle MP Tom Morrison demanded answers from the force. 

In a time when its becoming harder for people to access NHS help, Chloe Pomfret, a 21-year-old university student, came to Big Issue after being told that there were no available autism assessments for her until November 2043. We published her story – and almost immediately, Psychiatry UK offered her an autism assessment. Pomfret posted on social media that she was “incredibly grateful” but added: “SEND support needs to be a bigger priority because, unfortunately, not everyone has this opportunity.” 

Also this year, we discovered that funding which had kept more than 1,000 veterans off the street was set to end. Those receiving cash were in the dark about its future and housing for veterans faced risk of closure. Pressure mounted on the government, as a result of Big Issue reporting,  and in the end, the funding came through – with more cash and certainty than previously. It was announced on Remembrance weekend. 

We uncovered how the government and National Lottery Community Fund had financially supported anti-abortion groups, an exclusive story which reached more than 10,000 people on Instagram alone. 

As AI’s ghostly fingers wrap around the most accessible information, Big Issue is a voice of trust. One of our favourite stories this year was when Google’s AI summary told users that Arsenal footballer Declan Rice donated £14 million to a London housing project. It was a nice story, believable as Rice is, by all accounts, a nice man. But we revealed it was untrue. In fact, it was a hallucination by AI. There was no such donation and no such housing project.

Our door remains open, and we remain a warm house, for those who feel left behind, or for whom trust in other media has gone. You can count on Big Issue. 

Outsiders take over

Big Issue gives a platform to different voices and perspectives. This year, we handed editorial control over to people who brought fresh and urgent content to special editions of the magazine.

A group of marginalised teenagers created an edition that dug into the biggest issues that young people face, including education, health, fashion, money and more.

Graffiti artist Opake curated a celebration of outsiders, with this frenetic Popeye-inspired cover.

And there was agitator and artist 10Foot, whose special edition instantly became a collector’s item and boosted vendors’ sales in the spring.

Clandestine outsider 10Foot is known for writing on walls, from the northernmost parts of Britain to the southern tip of Patagonia. A freewheeling free thinker, when he took over Big Issue in March, he brought Banksy, Kneecap, Alan Moore and so many others, and challenged how we do everything. It was, he said, inspired by the late David Graeber, a “Graeberite way upwind from the billowing bin fire.” 

Reflecting on it all, 10Foot writes:

“Gerri – a Big Issue vendor in London – gave me this poster of the Tube map. It means a lot. It’s emotive and organic. I love it. Thanks to all the vendors who sold that 10Foot Big Issue. 

“Apparently we had UNPRECEDENTED SALES. Unprecedented is a word you hear an unprecedented amount of times in the media. I don’t think I’ve heard someone say that word in the real world. But we raised A LOT of money.

“I always wanted to make a tabloid paper based on David Graeber’s ideas. I’d call it Actually News and I’d rally thousands of friends to distribute it and snap our irresolved psyche from the depths of rush hour Evening Standard psychosis. 

“But I instead spent two decades writing really crap graffiti absolutely everywhere, which somehow, god knows, resulted in Big Issue approaching me and asking me to make what felt like my initial dream.

“For one priceless moment (to quote Origin Unknown) I was able to exact the anarchism-minus-trudge of class war; the famous-but-aloof people like Banksy and Alan Moore mixed with my friends from the pub; working class, upper class, white and black, the lad ladette lasagna that makes me proud to spring like a parsnip from these rocks and mud.

“So, if anyone’s got a billion pounds, I’ve got the energy to fight til I fall apart and if anyone’s got a billion pirate flags and a ladder then I’ll climb up every lamp post and sort this country out. 

“Can you just imagine how good every roundabout would look with a skull and crossbones on it?” 

We came to you with the Big Community Roadshow

Following on from the first in Newcastle in 2024, Cardiff was the next stop for our Big Community Roadshow in 2025. Our roadshows take Big Issue’s newsroom out on to the streets with our reporters converging on one place to tell vital stories and amplify marginalised voices.

Other parts of Big Issue Group come along, too. Our frontline team were on the ground as were representatives from Big Issue Invest and Recruit, offering a chance to reach new people and fight regional inequalities in the UK.

Our week in the Welsh capital shone a light on everything from issues facing asylum seekers to the reality behind the huge student blocks transforming the city skylines. We even covered the battle to keep Cardiff’s music scene from dying out. The grand finale brought together a panel including Welsh cabinet minister Julie James for a Big Debate on Wales’s future. 

Our Cardiff trip is just a snippet of how we strived to reach marginalised communities. We held a preview screening of film Lollipop ahead of its national cinema release to give women with experience of child removal a chance to see their experiences represented on screen and tell their stories. 

We also headed into schools for the first time. Our new education programme sees our frontline teams host assemblies and workshops to teach kids about poverty and homelessness. It launched in the South West this year with plans to expand the programme around the country in 2026.

Read more:

• The Big Issue at 30: What it means to stars of screen, politics and music
• The Big Issue in 30 moments: The ’10s and beyond

We revealed the scale of council losses in our special investigation into yo-yo houses

There is a flat barely 10 minutes’ walk from Regent’s Park in London. In 2017, a council tenant bought this flat off Camden Council for £156,100 under Right to Buy. Five years later, they sold the flat for £345,000. The buyer was Camden Council, meaning the ex-tenant had made a profit of £188,900, funded by taxpayer cash. The council had ended up nearly £200,000 down, only to have the same property it had previously owned.  

This is no anomaly. These are the yo-yo homes. Months of investigation from Big Issue exposed how yo-yo homes are losing councils millions – and a lucky few are profiting from the homelessness crisis.  It is an absurd situation, happening all across the country. On one hand, councils are forced to sell properties for a discount under Right to Buy. Yet, desperate to fight the costs of homelessness, they are buying up properties – often turning to the same homes they sold off just a few years previously.  

A loophole in Right to Buy rules means that after five years has passed, ex-tenants can sell their homes back to councils without repaying any of the discount – just like that flat in Camden.  

What we found

Yo-yo homes we uncovered included one property in Swindon. Sold by the council under Right to Buy in 2015 for £30,000, it was re-purchased in 2021 for £150,000.  

The City of Wolverhampton Council bought back one property for over six times the sum it had sold it for five-and-a-half years previously. The Yo-yo Home, sold under Right to Buy in April 2017 for £25,600, was repurchased in November 2022 for £165,000.  

Newham Council lost its money seven times over on one home, selling it in January 2015 for £29,100 then buying it back in October 2023 for £210,000. Barking and Dagenham Council sold a pair of properties for £127,720, then bought them back between two and three years later for a combined £415,000 – to knock them down as part of a regeneration scheme.  

In total, we’ve found over £70 million of money lost in the space of five years – all after Wales and Scotland abolished Right to Buy entirely.  

The reaction  

Our reporting sparked a reaction. News outlets from the Independent to the Sheffield Tribune and PoliticsJOE covered the story. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey and Your Party co-founders Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn weighed in after we revealed the existence and extent of Yo-yo Homes.  

Labour figures also responded. London mayor Sadiq Khan told us he supported councils bringing homes back into public hands but said: “It’s unfair that people are profiteering.”  

Paul Dennett, Andy Burnham’s deputy mayor in Greater Manchester, said the government needed to “urgently” live up to its promise on extending the time during which councils could reclaim Right to Buy discounts on sold properties.  

It also prompted action on a local level. Swindon councillor Tom Butcher (Green Party) tried to make the town’s leaders reveal the full extent of their losses on Yo-yo Homes across the past decade.  Yet Labour dismissed it as a waste of time, using their majority to vote the motion down.  

Nationally, the housing select committee chair Florence Eshalomi said our investigation is “further evidence that the current Right to Buy policy is failing taxpayers, local councils, and those who are in desperate need of a home to escape overcrowding and homelessness” and called for the government to “look again” at promised reforms.

Big Issue Recruit and Invest

Big Issue Invest (BII), our social investment arm, turned 20 this year, marking two decades of transforming lives through the social purpose organisations it supports. The £9.4 million it distributed to 50 organisations in 2024-25 has already made an impact.  

Take Great Oaks College, which supports young adults with learning difficulties in West London and Surrey. It had been given a two-month notice to vacate its premises and was struggling to get financial support before BII stepped in. 

Labour finished the year with a push towards helping youngsters into employment and our free recruitment service Big Issue Recruit (BIR) has been leading the charge. BIR supported 236 candidates this year and more than 70 have moved into employment. BIR caught the eye of homelessness minister Alison McGovern, who described it as an “excellent employment scheme” as ministers revealed their child poverty strategy.

Our campaigning got results

Big Issue has been one of the loudest voices calling for an end to the two-child limit on benefits alongside anti-poverty allies. This goal was finally achieved at the autumn budget, with government committed to scrapping the policy from April. It will lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. 

We accelerated the end to no-fault evictions. After years of campaigning, Lord John Bird won a “personal commitment” from the government in May to move the end of no-fault evictions forward “as quickly as possible”. No-fault evictions will finally end on 1 May 2026. 

We won the backing of 35 MPs who have agreed to work with us as ‘end poverty champions’. They spoke out against poverty in parliament, tabled written questions, met with their local Big Issue vendors, and have contributed articles to Big Issue. 

Our Poverty Zero campaign, which calls for the government to implement legal targets for eradicating poverty in the UK, secured more than 13,000 signatures from the public. We also sent an open letter signed by 68 big names demanding child poverty targets.

It ended up being a glaring omission when the child poverty strategy was revealed in December. We’ll keep the heat on in 2026 to hold the government accountable.

Our vendors

Our Big Issue vendors work tirelessly on the streets selling the magazine every day and we highlight their stories every single week.

We’re equipping them to face an increasingly cashless world. Almost 200 vendors are now using fumopay, which allows them to offer contactless payments to customers with proceeds going directly into their bank account. It’s also a valuable step to boost vendors’ wider digital skills.

Many of our current and former vendors get involved in bigger things. It was a big year for former Big Issue seller Angus. He used to sell the magazine in Edinburgh but now he gives walking tours of Aberdeen as part of Invisible Cities. 

His first customer this year was pretty notable (left). “Back when I was selling the Big Issue I never thought I’d be giving Prince William a tour of Aberdeen,” he told us back in April. 

Our work continues – into 2026 and beyond. 

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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