Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]

Meeting date: Thursday, February 1, 2024

Official Report 785KB pdf

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Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

Our next agenda item is an evidence session on homelessness and temporary accommodation. I welcome to the meeting Gordon MacRae, assistant director, communications and advocacy, Shelter Scotland, who is joining us in the room. Joining us remotely are Nicky Brown, head of homelessness and household support, City of Edinburgh Council; Michael Cameron, chief executive, Scottish Housing Regulator; Jim McBride, head of homelessness and complex needs, Glasgow City Council; and Gavin Smith, service manager for housing access at Fife Council and a member of the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, known as ALACHO. Thank you very much for attending today.

I have a few points to mention to the panel about the format of the meeting before we start. Please wait until I or the member asking the question say your name before speaking. Do not feel that you have to answer every single question. If you have nothing new to add to what has been said by others, that is okay. For witnesses online, please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn on your microphone before you start to speak. You can indicate with an R in the chat box in Zoom if you wish to come in on a question. I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible, as we have around one hour.

We now move to questions and I will invite members to ask questions in turn. The first question is from me. Can you provide a brief overview of the reasons for the increasingly high number of households living in temporary accommodation? Can representatives of individual councils describe the specific pressures in your area? I will come to Jim McBride first.

Good morning. The issues for Glasgow probably cover a number of areas and have been magnified to some degree over the past number of months. The domestic homeless population is very much influenced by the cost of living crisis and a number of changes to home circumstances. We see many people presenting because of household breakdown and a number of factors aligning to private rented sector accommodation coming to an end. Latterly—probably since June—we have seen a dramatic and substantial increase in positive leave to remain cases from Mears and from the Home Office backlog. When we take those into account, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people presenting in Glasgow as homeless. They are probably the main profiles.

The change to local connection rules in the legislation has had an impact. Although I welcome it, it has meant that we are looking at an additional 20 presentations per month in the city, on average. Outwith that, probably the other area of note is those with leave to remain who have come from local authorities in the north of England, boroughs in London and Northern Ireland.

Thanks very much for that. I ask Nicky Brown to come in.

Good morning, everyone. Edinburgh has some issues that are similar to those that Jim McBride raised, and it also has an acute shortage of affordable housing and an incredibly expensive private rented market. Jim McBride provided information on local connection cases, and we have seen a similar impact in the city. We have recently seen a number of people move to the city after receiving a positive asylum decision. That has increased significantly over the past three months.

The shortage of affordable housing, high private rents, people seeking assistance from us due to the cost of living crisis and those legislative changes are the main factors impacting on the number of people in temporary accommodation at the moment.

Thanks very much. Does anyone else want to come in on that? Gordon MacRae, I will bring you in.

It is important to remember where we have come from. Every year since the ending homelessness together strategy was published, with the exception of the period during the pandemic when people could not be evicted and could not move, homelessness has gone up in Scotland, as has the number of people in temporary accommodation. Before the pandemic, there were significant problems in Edinburgh and Glasgow, mainly around unsuitable accommodation in Edinburgh and failure to accommodate in Glasgow, and significant steps were taken to address those issues.

It is crucial that we understand that this is not a recent phenomenon. At Shelter Scotland, we talk about being in a housing emergency. That was an escalation from a housing crisis. We are not trying to go back to a place where everything was sunny and happy; we are seeing a problem that already existed getting worse. Although we must understand the most recent phenomenon that Jim McBride and Nicky Brown explained, we cannot lose sight of where we are starting from in the first place. The lack of investment over a number of years and the failure to have any meaningful strategy for children in temporary accommodation, for instance, are hampering the ability of front-line services to make long-term changes.

I invite Gavin Smith to come in.

It is important to say that, with the change in the profile of presentations, we need to remember that not everyone who is considered homeless is in temporary accommodation. In over half the case load in the country, people are making their own arrangements in some form. The difference that most local authorities have seen is that the take-up of temporary accommodation has increased since the pandemic and post-pandemic period. People who used to make their own arrangements are now reliant on local authorities, which is why we are seeing the numbers coming through that we are.

Thanks very much. Jeremy Balfour wants to come in.

Good morning, panel. I will aim this question at Michael Cameron to start with. Can you provide an overview of why you think that there is a systemic failure in homelessness services in some councils? Why are some homeless people not being offered temporary accommodation when they should be? How can homeless people ensure that their rights are enforced? I appreciate that there is a lot there, but perhaps you can unpack some of that for us.

Of course. Good morning, everyone. Put simply, the demands on the homelessness system—the number of people becoming homeless and the level of need that they have—exceeds the system’s capacity to respond. For some councils, the increase in capacity that is needed to respond to the current demands goes beyond that which they can deliver, which is why we have made the judgment call that there is systemic failure in the homelessness system in Scotland.

The most acute impact of that failure is where a council does not have suitable temporary accommodation available when a person needs it. That results in the council breaching its statutory duty by having to place a person in temporary accommodation that does not meet the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order 2014 criteria or, in more extreme situations, in its being unable to meet its duty to provide temporary accommodation at all because it does not have any temporary accommodation available. In that context, it is difficult to see how there can be a universal enforcement of rights when there is not sufficient capacity in the system.

Thank you. Does anyone else want to come in on this one? If not, I am happy to leave it there, convener.

I will direct the first part of my question to Jim McBride, but I appreciate that Nicky Brown might also want to come in, given his opening statement.

Before Christmas, I had a briefing from Glasgow City Council on the housing emergency that has been declared, specifically about the streamlining of the asylum process in the city. I also had a briefing from Mears at that time. I was told that roughly 580 to 600 households that had had a positive decision from the UK asylum process had overstayed in their Mears tenancy and were imminently going to be pushed into the Glasgow homelessness system, with many hundreds—perhaps thousands—to follow. Could Mr McBride tell us where we are now and the pressures that that has put on the system in Glasgow?

We are working closely with Mears daily. You are absolutely right that we are at a crossroads. We have exceeded the 600 number now, and managing alternative accommodation options would be seriously difficult for us.

Prior to Christmas, the city administration committee’s report clearly highlighted the pressures, and we had identified the fact that this would present an almost impossible challenge for us in managing the alternative accommodation options. Just now, we are trying to accommodate 10 households daily, but we are also finding that our ability to identify hotel accommodation within the city is extremely pressed. All that it takes is a particular event and/or seasonal planning around hotel capacity to bring us to a stretching point, and we find it difficult to continue to manage. At the moment, it is day to day, and we also have a responsibility to enforce law changes.

I suppose that it is a financial question, Mr McBride. I take the view that at the point of transition, when a positive outcome is reached, there should be cash from the United Kingdom Home Office and the UK Government to support that transition. The UK Home Office has taken a very different view. That said, though, it is everyone’s responsibility—the UK Government’s, the Scottish Government’s and all Scottish local authorities’, not just Glasgow’s—to get together and do the best they can. If there was more money, could you use that money to find a solution? What would that solution look like in the short term? What conversations are on-going about funding?

The short-term funding is crucial, even if it just allows us some breathing space to provide accommodation. Sadly, that accommodation is not what we would wish to offer, but at the moment the only option we have is to use hotel accommodation into the medium term.

Following the emergency committee meeting in December, the council has been looking at alternative accommodation options. We have six or seven test cases looking at vacant accommodation within the city. That will take some additional capital spend, but it will then allow us to look at alternatives and give us more of a medium-term accommodation option. Some of the accommodation that we are looking at is vacant properties; one building is a vacant nursing home.

The council, collectively, is doing the best it can. We are also doing work on modular building, but all those options will be medium to longer term.

I think that the committee would welcome a note on that.

Finally, Mr McBride, when I was speaking to people from Mears, I put it to them that we should be talking about permanent accommodation from day 1 of an asylum seeker family moving to the city. That means providing permanent accommodation, perhaps in Glasgow or in one of the other 31 local authorities across Scotland, and doing constructive work with them. Mears told me that it is not allowed to do that work. Is that a missed opportunity? Is that something that we have to do more of?

09:15  

I would suggest it is, yes. It is crucially important that we try to identify potential options for settled accommodation. We are working extremely well with the register of social landlords in Glasgow, but there are a number of competing factors that have an influencing effect on availability. However, as a principle, yes, we should do more of that.

I will not come back in, convener, but Nicky Brown might want to put some comments on the record.

For almost everything that Jim McBride said, we are in the same position, whether it be looking at medium-term solutions or having some difficulties in the short term in sourcing accommodation and the cost of temporary accommodation. As Jim McBride pointed out, the accommodation that we are accessing for these additional presentations is likely to be bed and breakfast or hotel accommodation. I appreciate that you wanted a note on that. If it is acceptable to the committee, Jim McBride and I could perhaps provide a joint note that highlights the areas on both sides.

Yes, that is fine. I am perfectly happy to accept that. Thanks very much. I now invite Paul O’Kane in.

I will start with a question for Gordon MacRae. In your first answer, you referred to a housing emergency, and Glasgow and Edinburgh city councils and other local authorities have declared such an emergency. It is not language that the Scottish Government has chosen to accept or use as a definition. Some people would argue that it is about semantics, but could we have your view about whether there is a housing emergency and whether it should be defined nationally?

When we talk about a housing emergency, we are trying to reflect the shift from what I described earlier as the failing housing and homelessness system that we saw pre-pandemic to one that is now systemically broken, with no real Scottish Government or UK Government plan to address it.

We think that it is a housing emergency because record numbers of children are in temporary accommodation and we have record numbers of open cases. We are not seeing a flow-through within the homelessness system. Although we can do more, and there are some good examples of preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place, once people enter the homelessness system, they rarely come out the other side.

I think that the Scottish Government accepts that there is a housing emergency in the council areas that have declared it, but it does not accept that there is a national emergency. That is a slightly semantic point, because if Glasgow and Edinburgh catch a cold, the rest of Scotland feels it.

It is a question of priorities. We find it difficult to square the statements of good intent from ministers with the fact that they are not backed up by resources. Cutting the capital budget by 26 per cent when the overall capital budget cut is only 10 per cent over the two years, or 4 per cent in one year, does not square with the statements about Scotland being somewhere where everyone can have a safe, warm home. The Housing 2040 strategy is now dead in the water as far as we are concerned. Ending homelessness together does not appear to have much meat on it any more. The housing bill is coming up, but, although the main areas of it are on prevention duties and other things, it will not address the issues that you are discussing today. It explicitly will not have a significant impact on the housing emergency.

We feel that a bit of dissonance has entered into the debate about housing and homelessness. We have a debate within Government about what will happen in the future while the activity on the ground in councils and elsewhere is just about trying to cope with the scale of the emergency that we see every day.

Does Jim McBride or Nicky Brown want to comment on that point? While Glasgow and Edinburgh have declared housing emergencies, the Scottish Government has not. Would there be a better unity of purpose if those local authority areas and the housing emergency were recognised more formally?

As an organisation, the City of Edinburgh Council has been very specific about the reasons why we believe that there is a housing emergency in Edinburgh. They are very clear. Primarily, they relate to the shortage of affordable housing and the number of people who are in temporary accommodation, although there is probably more to it than that. Our position is clear.

Some of the points that Gordon MacRae raised are well recognised generally within the sector. Most people in the sector, and probably in the Government, will recognise that there are significant challenges in Edinburgh and Glasgow. As previously stated, they have been well documented and highlighted. We are in the process of preparing a housing emergency action plan that we will present to committees in the coming months, and I imagine that that will contain requests for further discussions with the Scottish Government about how we can jointly resolve some of these issues.

I echo everything that Nicky Brown said. We now also have a draft action plan to address and mitigate some of the challenges. However, in principle, I echo what Nicky Brown said.

I have one question for the regulator. In December last year, the regulator’s update to the thematic report said that there had to be added urgency to the Scottish Government addressing the problems that we are discussing this morning. Michael Cameron, it would be useful to get your general sense of whether that added urgency has been accepted and responded to. What more could be done in the immediate period?

We published our update in December. We have had a number of discussions with the Scottish Government since then, partly to focus on what might be brought forward for wider discussion at the group that is looking at short-term supply challenges. That is where the focus needs to be. Immediate efforts have to be made to increase the availability of homes to let for people who are homeless and for that to be done quickly. That is challenging, because increasing the supply takes time when you are looking at developing new houses, but there are questions around whether we can accelerate programmes of purchasing properties. The acquisition programme that the Scottish Government has announced has the scope to expand that even further, to give local authorities the added capacity as quickly as possible to start to address some of the backlog of people who are in temporary accommodation.

There is no doubt that the issues in Glasgow and Edinburgh are profound, but attention should not be restricted to that. Argyll and Bute Council declared a housing crisis previously, so there is also a rural dimension to the situation.

A survey by ALACHO showed that 12 to 14 local authorities are routinely breaching or at risk of breaching their homelessness duties. My own local authority, Fife, is well publicised as being on the brink of declaring a housing emergency. I definitely echo what Nicky Brown and Jim McBride have said, but I want to make sure that the committee is aware that it is not just a major city issue—it exists across the country.

Thanks very much for your contributions. Gordon MacRae, do you want to come in quickly?

When we are talking about the housing emergency, it is important that we realise that this is not about councils failing; it is about the system not working. The emergency is not about the performance of local authority services; it is about the interaction between private supply, rental costs, welfare benefits—the whole system. We need to be cautious about almost raising the expectation that councils alone can fix the problem.

Thanks very much. We will now focus on stock management, new housing supply and budgets. I call John Mason.

I want to start with a follow-up to Mr MacRae’s comment that the budget for house building has been reduced. The Government’s answer seems to be that a lot of that was financial transactions money, not the main capital budget, and that money has been reduced even more severely. How do you respond to that?

Financial transactions capital is used mainly for things such as mid-market rents. As I understand it from the cabinet secretary’s evidence, that has been taken out of housing and put into the Scottish National Investment Bank in order to protect that policy priority. What that means is that, although mid-market rent has a limited impact on the number of people in temporary accommodation, it takes away another avenue for people whose only real avenue now will be mainstream social housing. It is not my understanding that the affordable housing supply programme—that is, the more homes money or the money for social housing—has been protected. I know that the Glasgow and Edinburgh transfer of funds has been frozen, and that, too, is a real-terms cut in and of itself.

Thanks very much.

My main question is for Mr Cameron. In your submission, you have suggested that there has been a lower turnover of social lets or lets from RSLs. Can you give us a bit more on that? Why do you think that that is the case? Presumably, people are dying at much the same rate as they always did.

In our national report on the social housing charter, which we published last August, we reported that social landlords are seeing a lower turnover of homes than they did before the pandemic in 2020. Around 1,700 fewer homes became empty during 2022-23 than in the previous year, but the figure is nearly 5,000 fewer than in 2019-20. We have also reported that homes were on average empty for 56 days, which is significantly up from 32 days in 2019.

It is difficult to say exactly why existing tenants are less inclined to move or give up their tenancy. Of course, it might reflect the success of the work that landlords are doing to help people to sustain their tenancy, or it might be that existing tenants are less keen to move during a cost of living crisis, when there is economic uncertainty and when their other options might be restricted, too. Whatever the reason for the slowdown in turnover, it means that social landlords have fewer homes available to let to people in need, including those experiencing homelessness.

Landlords can and do provide incentives to tenants who might be underoccupying larger homes, in particular, to encourage them to move, but, of course, that is entirely dependent on the tenant being prepared to do so. However, while the demand for social homes significantly exceeds supply, such measures are likely to have only a very limited impact at the margins.

But whether people move or stay does not affect the total number of houses available, does it?

It does not affect the total number of houses in the stock, but it does affect the number of houses that are available to let to new tenants. Last year, about 50,000 homes became available for landlords to let, but, when you look at that number against the numbers on housing lists, you will see that, every year, more than 30,000 households become homeless and require accommodation. When you add in some of the challenges that colleagues have touched on with regard to people coming through the asylum seeker system, you can also see that the number is some distance from what is required to meet the needs in any one year.

Thanks very much. I will leave it at that, convener.

I believe that Nicky Brown would like to come in.

I had put a note in the chat box, but Michael Cameron has already covered a couple of the points that I was going to make. I would just add, though, that the turnover of lets is sometimes reduced due to some of the positive work that organisations are doing around the prevention of homelessness.

I apologise, convener—that was the only point that I wanted to make.

Thanks very much. I call Marie McNair.

Good morning, panel.

My first question is for Nicky Brown, but I will put it to Gavin Smith, too. What scope is there for social landlords to use their void homes better to rehouse homeless people? It has been noted that your council reported in December that it currently has 1,360 void properties, but can you give us a bit of background on the reasons for that high number? Is it a funding issue? Are the voids in low-demand areas? Do you have a void strategy? What can be done to let such properties quicker, and to what extent are they suitable for homeless households?

09:30  

I will take those questions in reverse order.

The vast majority of the properties that are void at the moment are general needs homes, which would absolutely be suitable for homeless households. Indeed, we have made significant progress with the number of voids that we have now.

In answer to your question whether we have a strategy, we certainly do. We have a strong programme of work to try to reduce the number of voids in the city. Voids will be returned week on week, but we are now down to just over 1,200 voids. We have made significant inroads into that number, and there has been a real focus on that within the organisation.

On the build-up of voids, most local authorities, I am sure, will have faced the issue of capacity within the market to repair homes, and there are also legacy issues arising from only emergency repairs being carried out during the pandemic. Those are some of the major challenges that we have faced, but, as I have said, we now have a strong programme of work going on and are significantly reducing the number of voids.

One of the major focuses of our void strategy and programme is on ensuring that as many of those homes as possible are being provided to homeless households. The council has always had a target of 70 per cent of lets going to homeless households, and we are looking to increase that even further to 80 per cent over the next six to 12 months. However, we need to recognise that there are other vulnerable groups that are not homeless, such as people with mobility or health issues or people in overcrowded situations that would lead to their becoming homeless at some point in the future.

Thanks for that. Gavin, do you have a Fife perspective on this?

Yes. A lot of what Nicky Brown has said I was just ticking off my list. The public perception of void properties seems to be that they somehow show inefficiencies in the system, but they do not. I have 499 such properties at the moment, and I know where each one of them is with regard to repairs, lettings, delays and that kind of thing. Also, picking up on the previous point, I would suggest that one of the reasons for reduced turnover is that local authorities are having to divert more properties to provide temporary accommodation, which is stifling turnover and interrupting the supply chain.

As for the question whether more properties can be used to house homeless people, the fact is that they already are. However, as Nicky Brown has already emphasised, we all have very challenging targets at the moment but there is a mismatch in supply. For example, in Fife we get quite a high turnover of retirement, shelter and other very specialist properties that do not match the profile of people who are coming through the homelessness system. As a result, not every void can be used.

Fife has a transfer-led approach to housing allocations. We will look to get two or maybe three allocations out of every vacancy that we get. As Nicky Brown has said, every local authority is working hard on the voids process. It has big business and budget implications, so it is a key driver, and I assure the committee that every local authority is working as hard as it can to make best use of its void stock.

Can I quickly bring in Jeremy Balfour with a supplementary?

I have not finished, convener.

I am sorry, Marie.

Gavin, what percentage of properties are you giving to homeless households?

The figure was about 68 per cent in Fife in the last quarter.

And the average figure across the local authorities is 65 per cent.

That is right.

I have a question for Jim McBride. Right now, we are facing a perfect storm, with the pressures on capital budgets, high inflation, Brexit and a change to the housing asylum seekers policy. To what extent has historical policy set us up to fail?

To some degree, we are where we are. You might call it being set up to fail, but I would not necessarily suggest that that is the case. You just have to consider the factors—none of us anticipated a pandemic, a war in Ukraine and the impact of what is happening in the middle east. A lot of those external factors are having an impact on our ability to turn voids around.

On the point that both Gavin Smith and Nicky Brown made, we, too, are aware of this issue. As far as RSLs are concerned, we are having a slightly different discussion, because our percentage ask is 60 per cent and we are not achieving that yet. I do not want to suggest that there has been a systemic failure in that sense; it is the combination of circumstances that has put us into our current position with regard to trying to manage void properties and ensure accommodation for homeless households.

Full stock transfer was imposed on Glasgow City Council many years ago. With the homeless duty on councils, the fact that they have no housing stock is a conflict. Can you give us any comment on that?

We are continually having to negotiate with 68 social landlords in the city. We try to target having a relationship with the top 14, simply because of the housing stock that they generate. Over probably the past 24 months, and certainly during lockdown, we have built up a very positive relationship with the RSLs, but unfortunately, at the end of the day, we are still having to negotiate at that level rather than have our own stock.

Although it presents a challenge, we have introduced a matching process, and we now have a tracker for our local letting plans and regular development sessions with registered social landlords. The climate at the moment is about our working together instead of having to deal with competing challenges to provide for homeless households as well as address waiting lists for the RSLs.

It has been a challenge, but the climate and the atmosphere, particularly over the past two years or so, have been extremely positive and we are continuing to build on that. Indeed, following an RSL session that we had in December with all the chief executive officers, we now have a working plan.

Thank you. I appreciate those comments.

Without being too Edinburgh-centric—although it is clearly the most important place in Scotland—I have a question for Gordon MacRae or Nicky Brown. We have had the rent freeze in the city for almost a year now, but we have also seen rents increasing when people leave their flats. Is that having an effect on homelessness in the city? Are you noticing anything? Is that just an Edinburgh issue or is it happening in other parts of Scotland?

Affordability relative to income is certainly a more acute issue in Edinburgh. People in the private rented sector are less willing to move because they fear a hike in rent, but when, for example, one person leaves their shared accommodation, they experience a hike anyway. People’s ability to keep the home that they have is worsening.

There has been a continued increase in the number of homelessness presentations when people have been in the private rented sector immediately beforehand. I do not have the specific numbers for Edinburgh to hand, but we see a direct relationship between the high costs of private renting and the struggles of households during the cost of living crisis to keep the home that they have or to find suitable alternative accommodation. If someone is not able to keep their home—for example, because the landlord evicts them because they want to make a repair to the property or to move a family member in—only lax attempts are made to track whether those things actually happen, and it is incredibly difficult for them to stay in the city at a similar cost to what they were paying before. It is reasonable to expect there to be a direct relationship between people from the private rented sector who present as homeless and those circumstances.

We did not call for a rent cap, but we want there to be protections from eviction and to ensure that those protections are maintained as best they can be in the future. We are about to come to the end of that period and we think that there will be another spike. Our courts and our other systems simply cannot cope with a massive increase in evictions.

Nicky, do you have anything to add?

All that I would add is that, in Edinburgh at the moment, it is incredibly difficult for us to support people into the private sector after a period of homelessness, given the high cost of private rents in the city.

Thank you. We move to questions from Roz McCall.

My questions are for the council representatives. I will start with Gavin Smith. As a Mid Scotland and Fife MSP, I am glad that you have highlighted the issues that we have in Fife and the rural area. Councils—especially those that do not own their own stock—rely on social landlords to rehouse homeless households. How are registered social landlords responding to the pressures on council homelessness services? Is there scope for improving joint working?

Every local area is different. I can give an example from Fife. For a number of years, Fife has had a common housing register, which covers just over 99 per cent of the social housing stock in Fife. Anybody who approaches Fife Council goes through a housing options plan and will be assessed, and homelessness is integrated as part of that. Our return to the Scottish Housing Regulator shows a very low rate of section 5 referrals to other places, but when it comes to allocations that RSLs have made, the figure is far higher. It is going in the right direction now that we have an agreement; it is around 40 per cent. The other dimension to that is RSLs’ contribution to temporary accommodation, which has increased since the pandemic.

Most local authorities have very positive relationships with the RSLs in their areas. That has to be the case, because it is the only way to make the best use of the stock that is available and to provide the best customer experience. However, each local authority will develop a different approach. I know that Dundee City Council, Angus Council and others have different situations. Edinburgh has the EdIndex partnership, so the situation there is very different.

From my experience of working with the Chartered Institute of Housing over the past wee while, I think that RSLs are getting better at making a contribution—not just in responding to homelessness, but in homelessness prevention, sustaining tenancies and doing various other bits of work. Is there scope to go further? Absolutely—it has to happen.

We have already heard from the other council representatives on this topic, but if Nicky Brown or Jim McBride has anything specific to add, it would be great to hear from them.

Through the rapid rehousing transition plan that we set out for the Scottish Government, our RSL partners agreed to provide 50 per cent of their homes to homeless households. Recently, I have written to all the RSLs in the city to ask whether there was scope for them to increase that and they all responded positively. They have suggested that, over the coming months, they will increase their lets to homeless households to between 60 and 75 per cent.

I echo what Gavin Smith said. There is a strong partnership in Edinburgh. Our RSL partners are taking very seriously the challenges that exist around homelessness in the city and are very willing to help.

Through the affordable housing supply programme, the Scottish Government has provided money for a national acquisition plan to help to buy private homes for use to reduce the pressure on temporary accommodation. Again, this question is for the three council representatives, starting with Gavin Smith. Have you used that funding? Has it been an effective short-term measure? Does it need to be continued? Is there any downside or anything that we should be aware of in relation to that funding?

Not specifically in relation to the national acquisition fund. Fife Council was already purchasing properties at a rate of 50 a year, and it has looked to uprate that. In our homelessness strategy, which was approved on 11 January, we are now aiming to acquire 150 properties a year. Part of that will be funded through the national acquisition plan. It is very effective as a means of increasing the short-term housing supply. Public subsidy can do more than build new homes, but acquisition cannot be done in isolation.

There are market factors. I mentioned mismatches between need and supply. We have high housing demand in Fife, especially around St Andrews and Dunfermline, and it is not possible to purchase property in those areas because of market pressure. Acquisition must definitely be part of our housing access and homelessness strategy, but it cannot diminish the wider supply issues.

09:45  

I understand that acquisition cannot be done in isolation, but is access to that funding doing what it needs to do? Is the issue purely to do with the fact that, because of the situation with the private housing supply, the fund does not go far enough, or is it simply not able to do what it says on the tin?

It is early days, but most local authorities were acquiring anyway, so it is a case of scaling up schemes. Fife Council is the only one that I can speak about with real authority. In Fife, the issue is to do with what the market can provide in terms of affordability.

Nicky Brown and Jim McBride, could you comment on the national acquisition plan? Is it doing what it says on the tin? How is it affecting your local areas?

I echo what Gavin Smith said. The City of Edinburgh Council already had a strong acquisitions programme. We have been acquiring property for a number of years. Of course, we will look at all the funding that is available when we do that, but, as I said, we had a strong pipeline. We were always buying properties anyway. We recognise the need to do that. As Gavin Smith said, there will be certain areas where it is much more expensive to buy. In our acquisitions programme, we like to consolidate blocks so that we become the majority owner in the block or the majority landlord in the block.

A number of factors are involved. It is quite early days. As Gavin Smith said, most local authorities will already have been buying properties. The funding is welcome. In some respects, we would have liked it to have been slightly separated from the grant funding programme, but we will use whatever funding mechanisms are available to continue our already strong acquisitions programme.

Gordon MacRae would like to come in.

The national acquisition programme came out of a recommendation from the task and finish group on temporary accommodation. I have a couple of points to make. First, the £60 million is existing money, not new money. It is an allocation that reflects a pragmatic decision that the building of homes is taking too long to meet the temporary accommodation needs.

To build on what Gavin Smith and Nicky Brown said, acquisition has always been part of the supply mix, but the national acquisition programme was supposed to specifically address the pressures on households in temporary accommodation, especially larger households and households with children. There is still some way to go on local authorities getting past the last-in-the-block or buy-back approach and being very proactive about seeing where in the market they can find suitable accommodation specifically for people who are trapped in the homelessness system.

Just before the Scottish budget, we called on the Scottish Government to make specific funds available for larger homes for children. We felt that it was important to recognise that there should be scope to look at a longer period for compliance with some of the Scottish housing quality standards and other barriers that may make certain acquisitions less attractive in the short term. Were we or local authorities able to depreciate that over a longer period, it may bring some other properties into use. So far, I do not think that the Government has responded to that idea.

That is interesting. Thank you.

Jim, do you have anything to add?

The only thing that I will add is that, as Gavin Smith and Nicky Brown said about their councils, we have an acquisition programme, which we continue to develop. As Gordon MacRae pointed out, our priority is to acquire property for larger households, but the private rented sector in the city has reduced by 16 per cent. Nonetheless, we are aiming to identify empty homes and shop fronts, as well as other stock across the council, to target larger families.

The acquisition programme continues in Glasgow as much as it does elsewhere, and it is still very much a priority. In addition, a discussion is under way about investment in existing housing stock as part of that. That followed discussions at the event that we had with RSLs to look at every possible option for maximising the acquisition programme.

To follow on from Mr McBride’s comments about the acquisition programme, I know from my casework that Maryhill Housing Association is very active in tracking potential properties in the private sector and making direct efforts to get homeless families housed in those properties. It would be helpful for the committee to write to Glasgow City Council to find out how that is mapped out across the city and what the numbers are looking like per housing association, particularly—funnily enough—in the Maryhill and Springburn constituency. That would be helpful. I have put that in now, Mr McBride.

I want to ask a budgetary question. We know that the Scottish Government is still committed to delivering 110,000 new affordable homes by 2031 and £3.5 billion of investment over the course of the current parliamentary session. I know that there is a separate debate about whether that amount was sufficient, but that comes down to politicians who have to set budgets.

We note that the Scottish Government’s capital budget has been slashed by the UK Government, but the Scottish Government has also cut its own affordable housing supply budget. I will not get drawn into the politics of that, but what is the short-term impact of that on homelessness? If the same money is spent over the course of the parliamentary session, will that have a longer-term impact? There will be a short-term impact, but will there also be a longer-term impact if the same amount of money is spent over the course of the parliamentary session?

I suppose that it would make sense to direct that question to Gavin Smith, who can offer an ALACHO perspective.

Any interruption or reduction in the affordable housing supply, particularly the social supply, will cause lasting damage. Earlier, we talked about why turnover was down. I attribute a lot of that, three years later, to the impacts of the pandemic. That is not just the case with the social supply; we have talked about the operation of the wider sector, including the private rented side. There are opportunities there. There is the potential for the private sector to reduce. In my view, those homes should become social rented homes.

One of the best opportunities to prevent homelessness is to buy properties while the people are still in them, but there are a number of legal issues around that. It is true that there is an investment issue, but local authorities are also wrestling with a set of legal issues.

Is that in the short term or the longer term? At face value, I can see that a disruption in the longer-term investment programme could cause poorer outcomes in the longer term, but, in the short term, what impact is the cut in the capital budget likely to have on homelessness?

In my view, there will be an increase in the number of people who require temporary accommodation. That is what we saw during the pandemic, when the building and construction industry ceased work. If that slows down, there will be an immediate impact on temporary accommodation. We know that temporary accommodation is mentally and physically damaging for people’s education and employment, as well as other things. From my perspective—this is a personal one—any experience of the risk of homelessness or of homelessness is damaging to individuals and families.

It depends what you are talking about. The housing supply will take a long time to recover, but, for individuals and families, the process will take even longer.

Can I push you slightly further on that, Mr Smith? I am not trying to box clever here. There will undoubtedly be an impact, and that impact will not be beneficial in the slightest. I get that. Is the impact that you are talking about a revenue budget impact as opposed to an impact of the capital cut? I am trying to get at what the short-term impact is likely to be of the capital cut. Once you have answered that, I will bring in Mr MacRae, because I imagine that Shelter Scotland will have strong views on the issue.

I will just interrupt to say that I am conscious of the time. Can we be quite concise and succinct in our questions and our answers? We have until roughly 10 past 10 this morning, and several members still want to come in. Thank you.

I asked Mr Smith whether there is a cut to the capital budget in the coming financial year. Mr Smith has perhaps cited consequences for less revenue support, and those are two different budget streams, I understand. I genuinely just want Mr Smith to put on the record what the short-term impact is likely to be of the cut to the Scottish budget in capital terms rather than revenue terms. If I have misunderstood Mr Smith, I apologise.

Mr Smith, do you want to add anything before Mr MacRae comes in?

It will undoubtedly mean local authorities and RSLs looking at the affordable housing programme and revising their resource planning assumptions and resourcing for what their business plans look like. I do not think there is anything else to add.

That is very helpful.

In terms of capital, it will mean more people being in temporary accommodation for longer. It will mean increased homelessness. It is not just us saying that; the Scottish Government is saying that as well. The Scottish Government’s own strategy recognises that, unless there is a flow-through of new capital, there will be increased homelessness.

It is also important to say that, on the revenue side, although there has been some cash protection for specific budgets, the overall cut to local authority revenue means that it is very difficult to see how those cuts will not get transferred into other areas, and we know that one of the major drivers of homelessness is limited access to things such as addiction services for people in the core homelessness sector. It is about not just the homelessness or the housing support services, but all the stuff around that. We would suggest that, logically, you can conclude that the Scottish Government has made those cuts in the full knowledge that they will lead to increased homelessness.

Thank you.

Maybe one of the council representatives could answer this question to start with. In addition to resources through the local government settlement this financial year, the Scottish Government has provided £8 million to councils to implement the rapid rehousing transition plans, and it is providing an additional £2 million to implement partnership plans with the councils that are facing the greatest pressure. How is that funding being used and how can its impact be maximised?

The rapid rehousing transition plan, over the years that it has been in place, has been incredibly helpful for us. Through the funding that has been provided, we have looked at increasing our prevention activity, we have created multidisciplinary teams and we have looked at flexible funds for how we might help households to avoid homelessness.

I am acutely aware of the time, convener. All local authorities need to provide a rapid rehousing transition plan update by June this year. To save some time, I will just say that, as an organisation, we accept that the plan has been incredibly helpful and we would like to see it continued. It has had massive impacts on and benefits for some of the services that we have set up. We could provide a note for the committee on that.

That would be great. Thank you.

We would be happy to accept that, thank you. Jim, would you like to come in next?

Nicky Brown just made the point that I was going to make. We are also updating and revising that plan for Glasgow. I echo what Nicky Brown said. We thoroughly welcome the rapid rehousing transition plan and we have been concentrating on the key points within it. The update will be crucial in redefining where we are in terms of the city’s pressures.

We will now focus on the theme of homelessness prevention and support.

I realise that we are short of time and this is quite a big subject. I will aim my question at Mr McBride to start with. He mentioned household breakdown as one of the reasons for the pressure on the housing system. Are we doing enough to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place—for example, by trying to help households to not break down?

I would say that we very much are. Last year, we exceeded 12,000 housing option approaches. The projection this year, we suspect, will probably be 14,000. In the context of that, a large part of what Glasgow is trying to develop is a health and social care connect model, which is about trying to triage and manage inquiries and approaches. There is a significant impact and effort there in relation to managing prevention.

Nonetheless, the number of household applications is increasing year on year. It was over 6,500 last year. Albeit that the approaches still translate into a significant number, there is an issue with the forthcoming prevention duties. In many respects, I welcome that, but I have a caveat. I would attach a strong health warning to it, because the closest thing that I can compare it to is the introduction of adult support and protection legislation. With the best will in the world, when that commenced, the stakeholders and partners would just refer cases directly to social work services.

From what I have seen happening in Wales and London, the likelihood is that this will generate a significant increase in inquiries and approaches before we can get into a position where wider stakeholders also take a view about how to prevent homelessness in the first place. Certainly, we recognise that prevention is a crucial part of this, but it is about trying to balance it out with the level of need that we are experiencing.

10:00  

Are discretionary housing payments helping with any of this?

They are. Certainly, they are part of our plan and we are looking at how to extend them further.

Unless anyone else wants to come in, that is all.

Does anyone who is attending remotely want to come back in?

Briefly. Very much like Jim McBride, our organisation places a huge focus on the delivery of preventative services. We are looking to integrate family support services, welfare rights and debt services to ensure that we can provide the best level of wraparound and holistic support to people who are at risk of homelessness.

Another point to make about our work with our integration joint board partners is that we are in the process—as I have said previously—of creating our housing emergency action plan. Within that plan, there is a very strong theme that we will work with our IJB partners, for a variety of reasons, to make sure that we have the right housing and support for people and that we can get people out of hospitals and into suitable accommodation as quickly as possible.

Gavin Smith would like to come in.

I will be brief. I will just remind the committee that all local authorities are working hard on prevention, but one form of prevention is about ensuring new supply. For example, we have talked about relationship breakdown. A significant amount of that is domestic abuse that comes through to homelessness systems, where the need for one property becomes a need for two. You can replicate that across. I just wanted to make that point, convener.

Thanks very much. We are coming to the end of our questions and we are within time, so well done, everyone. Focusing on the theme of longer-term issues, I will invite Bob Doris back in.

I may not have got the memo about that, convener. I thought that I was asking question 13, on discretionary housing payments, but I think Mr Mason asked most of the questions on that theme. The only follow-up that I have is on the £90 million that the Scottish Government anticipates spending on discretionary housing payments in the coming year to mop up the mess of the UK Government’s bedroom tax. That is a lot of money in the system. Is there a more effective way of using that? In budgetary terms, it is quite a significant figure. Are there ways that we could use that money more effectively?

Can you indicate whom you are directing that question to?

It is for Mr MacRae, only because he is in the room and he made eye contact. I am not sure who would be the best person to answer that question.

The easiest answer is that, if we scrapped the so-called bedroom tax, it would free up more money. Obviously, there is the potential of a change in the Westminster Government and we would certainly want to see scrapping the bedroom tax on the agenda there. Shelter was very much involved in the campaign to protect tenants in Scotland from the bedroom tax. I think that it was the right thing to do, but it takes up a huge amount of the discretionary housing payments and, fundamentally, it is not enough money in the current climate.

That is helpful. Mr MacRae has mentioned the possibility of a change of Government at Westminster, which is an important point. It is also important to put on the record that any incoming Labour Government has not committed to ending the bedroom tax either. Indeed, Labour brought it in. That is now on the record.

Is that just a comment or—

Yes. I thought that it was quite an important point to make, convener.

Thank you. Katy Clark, who is joining us remotely, has a question.

My question is for Gordon MacRae and Gavin Smith, because I believe that their organisations are represented on the homelessness prevention task and finish group. As they will know, the Scottish Government’s response to the task group’s recommendations prioritised action that would have the greatest impact on reducing the numbers of households in temporary accommodation. Is there anything further that you can say about how long-term measures around the recommendations would impact on other working groups—for example, on the financing of temporary accommodation?

Shelter Scotland co-chaired the task and finish group on temporary accommodation. The recommendation that came out of that was not just our view but was co-produced with people with lived experience and other people across the sector. The recommendation was that the Scottish Government look further at the funding of temporary accommodation. That would involve having to discuss it with the Westminster Government, because of the relationship between housing benefit or universal credit and the provision of temporary accommodation. Scotland is relatively unusual in the UK in that so much of our temporary accommodation is in the social sector, which makes the profile slightly different.

On the medium and longer-term impacts, we still have a long way to go in making better use of the properties that we have. Local authorities now have a suite of tools—there are second homes and empty homes and there is the private renting legislation. Taking a view that every property is potentially a home would allow us to drive forward more change. However, we think that the timeline that the Scottish Government is proposing for things such as compulsory sale orders, compulsory purchase orders and compulsory rental orders and how to mobilise the properties that are void in the private sector is too long. We would like to see that timeline accelerated, especially in the upcoming housing bill.

Thank you. Gavin Smith, do you want to come in on that?

Just for clarity, ALACHO was not represented on that particular group. We co-chaired the temporary accommodation group with Shelter, but the prevention group was led by other people.

To echo what Gordon MacRae said, there is latency in the sector of long-term empty homes. There are dynamics in the private rented sector, but the answer is about investment—in the shorter and longer term—in the use and supply of social and affordable housing.

My next question is directed to Nicky Brown and Jim McBride. In the longer term, the Scottish Government plans to introduce a new statutory prevention duty. How do you envisage that impacting on demand for temporary accommodation?

In our engagement with civil servants so far, we have been indicating that it would have an impact on temporary accommodation services and on the level of demand on our staff who provide housing advice and homelessness assessment.

In comparable areas, which Jim McBride referenced earlier, where similar action has been taken to put wider responsibilities on partners, we have seen an increase in the immediate term of referrals to homelessness services. As an organisation, while we are incredibly focused on prevention and welcome the long-term benefits of this, we are concerned about the initial demand over the relatively short to medium term in relation to an increase in both homelessness preventions and the seeking of housing advice.

I echo what Nicky Brown said. My anxiety is probably more around what happens once the legislation is introduced in relation to how we have to communicate and work with stakeholders. However, I can understand why people would feel that the easier option would be just to refer to homelessness services—or, in Glasgow’s context, to health and social care connect—for advice or prevention around homelessness, rather than necessarily trying to provide some guidance themselves to prevent it even coming towards homelessness services for advice and guidance.

It is certainly welcome in the long term. The only thing that I can equate it to is the introduction of adult support and protection, until that settled. Once things settle, it should be easy to route to where folk feel that the expertise and knowledge are, rather than it necessarily being a discussion around somebody’s homelessness or housing circumstances.

I encourage MSPs to look at the financial memorandum that comes with the housing bill, because it is difficult to see how the prevention duty would be delivered within existing resource. In recent history, as we have been discussing today, there has been an expansion of duties on local authorities but a reduction in capital and revenue. That is the single biggest problem that we are facing.

Thanks very much, Katy Clark and Gordon MacRae. That concludes this evidence session. Thank you, all, for attending. I will briefly suspend the meeting to allow the setting up of the next agenda item. Thank you once again.

10:10 Meeting suspended.  

10:15 On resuming—