Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government collects snapshot information through the HL2 aggregate data collection on the number of households in temporary accommodation placements at the end of each quarter, by accommodation type. This information is available for all Local Authorities from 2002. This information is published as part of the Homelessness in Scotland Statistics publications. Table 29 of the ‘Main tables’ associated with the 2020/21 publication – the latest full year available – provides the number of households in bed and breakfast accommodation placements as at 31 March 2021, by local authority.

Supporting documents - Homelessness in Scotland: 2020 to 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

By its nature, snapshot data cannot provide a true reflection of the entirety of temporary accommodation usage across a period of time.

The Scottish Government also collects record level data relating to individual temporary accommodation placements through the HL3 data collection. The HL1 data collection gathers information on the number of homelessness applications and number of people associated with households making homelessness applications. Information relating to the number of people within temporary accommodation placements is not collected via the HL3 collection. Therefore, to provide an estimate of the number of people in temporary accommodation placements, this must be derived by linking household records between the HL1 and HL3 data collections.

However, it is important to note that it is not necessarily the case that all household members associated with a homelessness application will enter the associated temporary accommodation placement(s). For example, a household may make alternative arrangements for children so the children are never present in the temporary accommodation.

Comprehensive HL3 data is only available for all local authorities from 2017-18, which can include temporary accommodation placements which commenced prior to 2017-18. While some local authorities have provided HL3 data prior to 2017-18, coverage is variable across local authorities with some not providing any data prior to 2017-18 and some providing a much smaller number of placements compared to subsequent years, suggesting this data is incomplete. Therefore, only B&B placements that were live from 2017-18 onwards have been provided to give robust comprehensive statistics across Scotland and a consistent time series over the past 4 years.

Data is provided up to 2020-21 as this is the most recent full-year data available.

Temporary accommodation placements in hotels are captured within a broader ‘other’ category (via the HL2 or HL3 collections) and so this data cannot be provided separately.

The following table shows the estimated number of people in Bed and Breakfast (B&B) temporary accommodation placements by year and local authority. Where the same household has had multiple B&B placements within the same year, the people within that household have only been included once. Where the same household has had multiple B&B placements in different years, the people within the households have been included in each of the years they were in a B&B placement. his includes instances where B&B placements have spanned multiple years, with the people being included in the figures for all years in which the B&B placement was live.

Values of 1, 2, 3 or 4 are denoted by ‘<5’ for disclosure control purposes.

Estimated number of people in B&B temporary accommodation placements, by local authority: 2017-18-2020-21

The Flood Risk Management Plans for the period 2022 to 2028 were published by SEPA on 17 January 2022. The plans are accessible from SEPA's website.

Flood Risk Management Plans | SEPA

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the number of foster carers registered with each local authority or voluntary provider.

I have frequent discussions with Ministerial colleagues on a range of matters. We are committed to reforming council tax to make it fairer, working with the Scottish Green Party and COSLA to oversee the development of effective deliberative engagement on sources of local government funding. including Council Tax, that will culminate in a Citizens' Assembly.

The Scottish Government has no plans to review the legislation governing the election of civic heads.

Care and Repair services operate throughout Scotland to offer independent advice and assistance to help homeowners repair, improve or adapt their homes so that they can live in comfort and safety in their own community. As of 1 March there were 27 care and repair offices in Scotland covering all local authority areas except West Lothian, with all providing help to vulnerable older and disabled people to install fire alarms under the government financed scheme.

The Scottish Government has provided £1.23 million to Care and Repair Scotland during 2021-22. This includes £1.1 million to support compliance with the new fire alarms legislation and £130,000 for its role as national coordinating body for Care and Repair services in Scotland .

The Scottish Government publishes figures relating to Local Authority New Build Completions in the ‘Local Authority Starts and Completions’ table found on our website here; https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-for-scotland-new-house-building/ .

Some of these homes will have been supported by Scottish Government funding and some will have been financed through other routes.

We do not hold related council tax band information.

The Scottish Government is committed to keeping The Promise. As outlined in the 2021-22 Programme for Government, we are working with The Promise and other partners to redesign the Children’s Hearings System. Sheriff David Mackie has been appointed as Chair of the Hearings System Working Group which has been established to develop more detailed recommendations in the coming year. There will also be reforms to the Children’s Hearings System through children’s care and justice legislation to be introduced in this Parliament.

The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of homelessness funding provided to local authorities in the annual local government finance settlements since 1999 has been included in the block grant and is therefore not separately identifiable. It is therefore not possible to determine how much of the local government finance settlement each year supports work to tackle homelessness in any year.

However, the unquantified amounts within the block grant have been supplemented in recent years through identifiable sums added to the block grant, which are enhanced or reduced by the overall annual changes in the local government finance settlement. The additional resource, set out in the table below, was allocated to local authorities for the development and implementation of rapid rehousing transition plans and for preventing and responding to homelessness.