FM told to ‘act over homeless’
THE First Minister has been told to “listen and act” as council officers warned of a general systemic failure in coping with the homeless in Scotland, with more than three in four local authorities unable to meet their legal duties for putting a roof over people’s heads.
A red flag assessment carried out by the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers (ALACHO) shows that some 25 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities are breaching the law in dealing with the homeless as the crisis deepens.
The ALACHO study covering 96 officers in all of Scotland’s local authorities found that just three councils are managing to cope with the current situation with no obvious risk of it getting worse.
It shows what ALACHO described as a “general deterioration” in confidence to meet statutory obligations to deal with homelessness in a survey carried out between June 6 and 28 a month after the Scottish Government’s national housing emergency declaration.
The ALACHO traffic light system set out for the study found that 25 (78%) of the 32 Scottish councils had registered a red flag on at least one of three key aspects of their services in June meaning they were “struggling to cope” and had “regular statutory breaches”.
ALACHO warned: “The sector appears to have moved from systemic failure across a small number of councils mainly in the central belt to a more general failure in service delivery across much of Scotland.”
The survey found that 15 out of the 32 councils (46.9%) assessed all three key aspects of their service as “red”. In November, last year there were 12 and in November 2021 there were just two.
The current triple red flag authorities are Aberdeen, Argyll and Bute, Clackmannanshire, Dundee, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, Glasgow, Highland, Orkney, Scottish Borders, West Dunbartonshire and West Lothian.
Only Aberdeenshire, Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar, covering the Western Isles, and Moray said it was confident of meeting all its duties all the time.
The three key aspects surveyed involved the legal obligation to offer temporary accommodation when they assess a person or household as unintentionally homeless, the ability to meet the statutory requirement to not place the homeless in “unsuitable” homes and the ability to supply permanent lets.
ALACHO said that the survey demonstrated “continuing evidence” of rising number of people presenting as homeless, record numbers in temporary accommodation, “widespread” statutory breaches of duties to homeless and rising waiting times for those in need of a home.
Alison Watson, director of Shelter Scotland, described failure to fulfil legal duties was “deplorable” and that the ALACHO study revealed the “horrifying reality of Scotland’s housing emergency”.
Meanwhile the Scottish Government’s affordable homes budget, aimed at cutting homelessness and avoid the use of temporary accommodation has taken a cumulative hit of over £280m over the past three years.
Housing minister Paul Mclennan said: ‘Tackling the current housing emergency requires a joint approach between the Scottish and UK governments and local authorities. We are making available record funding of more than £14 billion to councils in 2024-25 to deliver a range of services, including homelessness services – a real-terms increase of 4.3% compared with the previous year.”