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I welcome the supporting statement that Shelter has shared with the committee, which recognises that the change is an important step towards improving outcomes for homeless households and giving them the same ability to move as any other household would have. Shelter advocates on behalf of people who are experiencing homelessness. I know that it sees the change as a strong step in the right direction towards supporting a person’s right to choose where they live. It has held that position for quite some time and is content that the Scottish Government has now introduced such a change, having previously delayed—although that was for good reasons, because of Covid and then the situation in Ukraine. We feel that now is the right time to move forward and that to delay any further would not be right.

I am happy to do so. In my opening statement, I said that about 5 per cent of households do not have a connection to the local authority that they present to. There were fewer than 200 referrals last year, and 11 councils made no referrals and 13 councils made five or fewer, so we are not talking about huge numbers of people or huge increases.

However, we recognise that we must monitor, observe and keep an eye on any trends. We completed an island communities impact assessment with engagement from each of the six island and rural local authorities to ensure that we were hearing about the issues that Emma Roddick has articulated. The monitoring and reporting framework has been developed in collaboration with them and with front-line services and people with lived experience, to capture relevant information to support the data that had already been gathered through the HL1 homelessness statistics. Monitoring those statistics will be an important way of understanding the impact of the legislation. We have said that, if there should be any indications of difficulty, we will engage directly with the relevant local authority to consider how we can support it.

The backstop would be if an emergency situation were to be created in an area. There would then be the potential to come forward with an exemption, which would require me to come back to Parliament, though I would want to do so only in extremis. I do not anticipate that that will need to be done, because I think that local authorities will manage the situation and that, with our support, they will be able to address any additional applications that come in.

I will be happy to come back to the committee with an update report after a period of implementation, if it would be helpful to give you further information at that point.

It is fair to say that there are mixed views in local authorities. Some have raised those concerns but others have not, so there is no consistent view across local authorities. Those who work in the homelessness sector and experts are clear that ending these referrals is the right thing to do. It is not the case that those local authorities that raised concerns said that we should not do it; the concerns were more about the timing. I listened to that when it came to dealing with Covid and Ukraine. That is why we delayed the legislation, perhaps to the frustration of some homelessness stakeholders. These matters are always about achieving a balance. It would not be right if, 20 years on from the issue having first been raised, we did not move forward on it. I have said that we will monitor any impact and that we will work with those individual local authorities to help them to overcome any issues.

As I said at the beginning of my comments, I have said clearly, particularly to Edinburgh and Glasgow councils, that my door is open and that I am keen to hear and receive proposals on how we can help them to move forward on some of the particular challenges that they face. That continues to be the case.

I will bring in my officials in a moment.

That obviously depends on their circumstances. Their homelessness application will be assessed on the basis their needs, as would any homelessness application.

The change team that sits around the table at the homelessness strategic group that I attend has been absolutely fantastic at ensuring that all measures and developments in homelessness policies, services and legislation are checked against the views of people with lived experience. The team has drawn together a huge number of people with varied experience of accessing homelessness services, and their input is absolutely critical to ensuring that changes that are made or issues that we need to address further are identified and highlighted. If the committee has not done so already, I encourage it to engage with the change team, which is an amazing group of people.

Again, I will bring in officials on the detail. Some of the data is already being collected, and the monitoring and evaluation framework is about adding information to what is already there.

I will go back to the numbers, which are relatively small. The latest figures that we have, for 2021-22, show that Edinburgh made 10 referrals and that Glasgow made 20. I am not minimising the issue, but we need to see it in the context of the overall number of applications.

I am obviously aware that there are pressures in Glasgow and Edinburgh. I have engaged very directly with the housing conveners of both cities, and we need to see the solutions as part of the wider housing system. Those systems are not the same in Glasgow and Edinburgh—they face different challenges. I have said to both housing conveners—I reiterated it in a letter that I issued yesterday—that I am keen to work with both of them and with those other local authorities that have, for example, the highest number of people in temporary accommodation to look at the solutions that they can bring forward, because they know their areas better than I do, and at how we can support them with those solutions. They can be ambitious in doing that, and I have offered to look favourably on solutions that can be brought forward with evidence of how they will impact the situation by resolving and reducing the number of people in temporary accommodation and by helping to reduce homelessness in both cities generally.

The monitoring framework will be important in monitoring any impact of the change on Glasgow, Edinburgh or anywhere else, and we will continue to engage with local authorities on that. However, I cannot stress enough how open I have been to their coming forward with solutions that they think can make a difference, and I look forward to engaging with them further on that.

At the time, we will look at what interventions have already been made and what further interventions a local authority believes are necessary. However, I go back to the wider discussion. We have already been up front with Glasgow City Council and the City of Edinburgh Council that they should tell us what they think they need to do to tackle temporary accommodation issues. We can then have a conversation about how that is supported.

We would want local authorities that are in the situation that you describe to make full use of the allocations that they have already received. For example, the City of Edinburgh Council has not yet fully used its allocation for the affordable housing supply programme, and we want it to get on with that. I know that it has a few things in the pipeline, but we need the full allocation to be used before any further resources are used. However, I have said that, if the City of Edinburgh Council—or any other local authority with particular pressures on temporary accommodation—tells us what it thinks are the key things that it needs to do and that it can fund certain of them itself but that it needs a bit of assistance with others, I will look favourably on providing that if there is evidence that it will make a difference. Those are the conversations that we are having.

Scotland has some of the strongest rights in the world for people who are experiencing homelessness. However, because local connection powers are discretionary at the moment, there is a risk of inconsistent practice across the country, which can result in households in one area receiving a different service from that which households in another would receive. Ending the referral powers will result in a more consistent service for homeless households across Scotland.

When people make a homelessness application to another local authority, they have good reasons for doing that. As I said in my opening statement, they might want to be closer to family or to a job opportunity, or they might want to use services that are not available in their current area. They might want to make a fresh start because they do not feel safe in their present home. We have listened to people’s experiences and have built on what we have heard.

Changing the rules on local connection has been a long-standing commitment—it is not something that has come to light recently—and the change has been informed by experts in the homelessness sector. As I said in my opening statement, the bones of this go back as far as 2002, when the issue was first raised. We have delayed, but we feel that now is the right time to move forward.

The City of Edinburgh Council will have those figures, which will change depending on the availability of accommodation at the time. Not everybody who requires accommodation in Edinburgh goes into temporary accommodation—it depends on their circumstances and the availability of properties to meet their needs. For example, families quite often end up in temporary accommodation because there is no suitable home available to meet their needs. It is about matching the needs of the person with the accommodation that is available.

I stress that Edinburgh made 10 referrals in 2021-22, so the figures are small. Having said that, I am not going to underestimate the challenge that Edinburgh has with temporary accommodation. Looked at through that lens, local connection is not really the issue for Edinburgh; the challenge is the availability of stock and the numbers of people who therefore go into temporary accommodation because they cannot be matched with a home that meets their needs. We need to resolve that problem, and I cannot stress enough that we need to think outside the box.

An opportunity that has come out of the quite imaginative thinking that is going on around the Ukraine programme is looking at whether there are more innovative solutions—such as modular build, which was raised in the chamber during the Ukraine statement—and whether there are sites available for more rapid development of housing that might have a more general application beyond the Ukraine programme.

We need to come up with imaginative solutions. The offer is there to councils in Edinburgh and other areas that have a particular problem with housing availability and temporary accommodation to come forward with ideas, which we will help to make happen. We must look at Edinburgh’s whole housing system instead of the local connection aspect, which is not really the issue for anyone here. The issue is more that we need to get the housing system in Edinburgh into balance.