Official Report 220KB pdf
Item 2 is our consideration of the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill. I welcome our witnesses to the first panel session on the bill. We appreciate your attendance today. In order to maximise the benefit of your time at the committee, we would like to move straight to questions. We have received a number of submissions from you, which we have found useful and for which we are grateful. Going to questions means that there will be no opportunity for opening statements. If, following this session, you feel that you wish to add comments that would be useful to our considerations, we are more than happy to receive them in correspondence from you.
The deadline for the production of the homelessness strategies is April. Without wishing to boast, I think that City of Edinburgh Council is the first to complete its report, but we believe that most people are progressing well. The Scottish Executive did a survey recently to establish progress and to give people a chance to express any concerns. The general feeling is that the preparation of the strategies has been well resourced and that they are going well.
Glasgow City Council is well advanced in the process of developing a local housing strategy. We have been working hard to ensure that the strategy is carried out in partnership. We now have a multi-agency homelessness partnership in Glasgow, which is run by the council, health colleagues and the voluntary sector. We are working hard to ensure that the strategy reflects the inputs of all those partners. The process itself is adequately funded, and we will have no trouble delivering the strategy on time.
Highland Council cannot add an awful lot to what has been said. In 1999, we developed a homelessness strategy across the Highlands on a partnership basis. We are now updating that strategy in the light of what we are being asked to do. We have completed mapping exercises of the available homelessness services and the gaps that exist. That will inform much of the requirement, if any, for additional resources in the future. The biggest issue for us relates to the supply side—we simply do not have enough houses in the Highlands. Unless we get that right, and unless there is a significant increase in finance to support the development of additional stock and affordable housing in the Highlands, it will be difficult for us to achieve the bill's main objective.
The submissions that we have received are generally supportive of the bill and its aims. I would like to concentrate on priority need. I put this question first to Highland Council. Your submission raises concerns about the impact of the extension of the priority need category on existing waiting lists, and you discuss how you would be able to manage the impact. Will you expand on that?
Highland Council is under a lot of pressure in relation to housing, and it is difficult to gauge which groups of people are in most need. It varies: there is no easy system by which we can say which group or individual is in more housing need. If people are in housing need, the issue is simply one of being able to get them a house.
That question was specifically about the Highland Council submission, but does anybody else have a comment? How do the other witnesses expect expanding the priority need category to affect the demand for houses and the pressure that is already placed on local authorities to house those who present as homeless and people who aspire to move from a three-apartment house to a four-apartment house, for example, or from a flat to a terraced house? How will local authorities and social landlords be able to meet the demand?
I echo what Mark Turley said. The initial expansion of priority need is not likely to be an issue for Glasgow City Council because, in common with a number of other authorities, we already define those covered by the initial extension as being in priority need.
COSLA supports the homelessness task force entirely in seeking to achieve a situation in which those who are homeless have a right to housing and support. It cannot be acceptable in the longer term for single people who are fit, healthy and homeless to be excluded in the way that they are under current legislation. There cannot be anything wrong with the principle of aspiring to do something about that. COSLA's position is that the principle is right, but that we need to be careful that we do not rush into it complacently and irresponsibly. The easiest thing in the world would be to say, "Let's abandon priority need now," because it sounds like a nice thing to do. We can do it only when real evidence exists that housing supply and the quality of housing conditions have improved.
In your answer to an earlier question, you reminded us that homelessness strategies must be in place by next April. Are we a bit premature in introducing the bill at this stage? Should we wait until the strategies are in place before we finalise it?
I repeat that most councils have told us that they believe that the resources that have been made available are sufficient to produce good-quality strategies. We have not heard anyone say that they will struggle to produce a good-quality strategy. If that is the case, we can be confident that we will have good-quality information come next spring.
I would like to pick up on the point about priority need and play the part of devil's advocate to some extent. Could there really be a provision in the bill to say that anyone who runs the risk of involvement in the serious misuse of alcohol or drugs should be considered as having a priority need? Do you accept that, in some parts of our society, that would mean that virtually a whole neighbourhood could claim to be in priority need? Surely the real priorities will be defined by the people who handle individual applications rather than by a clear message from the bill itself.
Four tests have to be applied when someone presents as homeless, the first of which is whether they are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Only if the answer to that question is yes do we make a priority need assessment. Such a provision could never cover whole communities unless the whole community was homeless. The first question is whether they are homeless. Only if they are homeless or threatened with homelessness would we move on to the next test, which is whether they have a priority need. The priority need test applies only to people who are homeless in the first place.
They could say that the conditions were intolerable and that they could no longer live in their close because of what is happening up the stairs from them or round about them. I know that currently somebody can be considered homeless in such circumstances if they are under threat.
The bill does not change the definition of homelessness. Currently, if someone presents as homeless because people are dealing drugs upstairs, for example, councils have to make a judgment about whether it is reasonable for them to continue to occupy their home in the circumstances. The bill does not change that.
So a judgment will be made by the housing provider.
Councils already have to make a judgment about whether someone is homeless in such circumstances. To be fair, it happens quite a lot. People come in and say, "I cannot continue living where I am. It's dreadful. The neighbours are awful—wild parties, drugs, kids out of control." By law, councils have to consider each case on its merits. They cannot have a blanket policy. However, such complaints are so widespread that most councils would not consider somebody to be homeless in those circumstances. They would see it more as a general housing management problem.
I might be wrong about this, so one of the officers may want to correct me, but I believe that, if the bill is enacted, cases will be handled differently in future. At the moment, there are cases in which there is little advantage in people asking for a transfer—if they are living in circumstances that they deem to be intolerable, because of neighbour disputes for example—because they would not be seen as homeless. If they made themselves homeless by abandoning their tenancy, they would be seen as having made themselves intentionally homeless, so they would not have priority need. If we take away the priority need categories, they will be homeless. Someone will be able to get homelessness priority simply by abandoning their tenancy—I think.
It is important that the four tests are done in the right order. The first test is whether someone is homeless or is threatened with being homeless. If they are homeless, the second test is whether they have a priority need. If they are homeless and have a priority need, the third test is whether they are intentionally homeless. The fourth test is about local connection.
It is important to be clear about homelessness provision and good housing management. In most cases, if a council is satisfied that a specific individual, as opposed to the community, is threatened by particular behaviour, good housing management means that that person will be rehoused by the council or a landlord. Such a management transfer route avoids the need for that person to go down the homelessness route. Mark Turley's assertion that the bill will not change the fundamental assessment that local authorities make or the requirement to practice good housing management is right.
We should not lose sight of the two aspects that have been mentioned. First, there should be sufficient accommodation capacity to allow people to be moved to different accommodation. That is an investment issue. Secondly, the supporting people grant and housing support services will be significant in giving us something that we have not had before. New, additional resources will be available to develop new, additional housing support services that will enable people to become more stabilised in their tenancy and to retain that tenancy. That level of services has not been available before.
I want to clarify what the effect is of not having the resources to deal with homelessness problems. Councillor Coutts has told us about the position in the Highlands. My understanding is that about a third of people leak from the homelessness application system. They refuse offers or withdraw their application, for example. That suggests that there are issues of quality and choice within the process. How will it be possible to deal with that wasted bureaucracy and loss of potential applicants? Do such people necessarily have support needs? Do you have any feel for the quality of the people who leak from the system? How should their aspirations be dealt with? Do you follow my point?
One of the problems that we face in Glasgow is that a significant number of people repeat their experience of homelessness over a period of time. I think that that is what you are hinting at. We have between about 12,000 and 12,500 presentations a year. At any one point, between 4,000 and 6,000 of those might be made by people who are repeating their experience of homelessness.
According to Councillor Coutts, if resources in Highland are not increased and the number of houses that are available remains static, the bill will have an impact on other aspects of housing. Presumably, the same is true in other areas. If provision for applications from homeless people increases, will waiting lists and transfers be disadvantaged?
Yes. I return to the point that I made earlier. It will be important to review progress on delivering the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill in parallel with overall assessments of demand for social rented housing in individual local authority areas and with the investment programmes that are required to deliver new, improved housing where that is necessary.
We need to remember that homelessness strategies are not just homelessness strategies. There is a clear focus on prevention and alleviation. As local authorities, we need to work in tandem with partner organisations so that we have a much clearer line about how we prevent homelessness in the first place. A lot of work is still to be done on that, but the homelessness strategies should allow us to draw out approaches and to implement programmes to allow us to focus much more on prevention further upstream, so that people do not get to that point in the first place.
The bill contains intentionality provisions that would place a continuous duty on local authorities to provide temporary accommodation and support. The clear evidence that we received from Scottish Executive officials last week was that such a duty would end only if the individual went away and found their own accommodation. Do the witnesses think that that is an achievable position for local authorities, bearing in mind the difficulties that David Comley has mentioned? Is that a feasible proposal?
Interestingly, we discussed that issue just before we came into the room.
COSLA's written submission makes the point that the nitty-gritty, practical solution to the problem that David Comley has just described does not yet exist. I say that notwithstanding the fact that I was a member of the task force. When we were asked that question, the only example that we were able to come up with is that of the Dundee families project. That project has clearly made some significant progress, but no one would pretend that that model has met the range of requirements of a small number of households with a wide range of needs.
Have you received an indication of the level of the resources that is likely to come from the supporting people programme?
We have received some indication, but two significant areas of uncertainty remain in respect of pipeline projects—those that are not yet fully up and running—and the subsidy levels that councils might eventually receive. We have other concerns, but we think that the question of resources could be resolved if implementation of the part of the bill that relates to the supporting people programme were delayed. Even if we have the resources, the next question that we need to ask is, "What is the model of accommodation and support for which we would use those resources?"
We heard earlier about one aspect of the bill of which we are all aware: the lack of what we would all define as decent housing. Should the bill include a provision to set the standard for accommodation—temporary or otherwise—that people should be expected to move into under its terms?
I do not wish to hog the session, but I have a response to the point and to one that was made earlier about leakage. If we allow more people to have priority, the only result will be a bigger bunfight over limited resources. That is a concern—indeed, it is already happening. In the first quarter of this year, a quarter of those who were accepted as being homeless, in priority need, not intentionally homeless and with a local connection, did not accept the accommodation that they were offered and disappeared off into the system.
Should we consider including a provision to define the standard of accommodation?
It would be difficult to frame such a standard. A lot of problems with accommodation do not relate to the bricks and mortar or to the quality of the fixtures and fittings, but to the location. How do those who are drafting the legislation define the things that people—
It is possible to define the bricks and mortar in order to say that accommodation is below a tolerable standard.
Even if that were done, people would continue to refuse accommodation that was deemed to be tolerable because it was in a location that they did not find acceptable.
It is one of those things that sounds great in principle. However, as Garry Coutts said, it would be difficult to define the minimum standard. If the level were pitched at just below tolerable standard, would that make a significant difference to the existing situation?
Perhaps we should go the whole hog and create a decency standard, purely for use under the bill.
From a local authority point of view, the real danger of including such a definition in the bill is that it would not be linked in any way to the investment resources that are required to implement the legislation. That could lead to the setting of a standard that could not be achieved in practice, which could be worse than having no standard at all.
That is the root of the problem.
I will move on to address the concept of local connection. You will be aware that the task force raised concerns about suspension of the local connection because it might lead to an "unmanageable" number of homelessness applications. Do you share those concerns?
COSLA shares those concerns. When we held our initial discussions on the bill, the suspension of local connection attracted the greatest attention of our members. In some respects, their concern arose from a perception of what would happen. We have yet to map out the situation—it may be difficult to do so. However, I believe that local connection is manageable. We should try to develop a system that can be balanced against our resources. The legislation can be affordable, but we should develop a system that can be suspended or reintroduced as necessary. The concerns are mainly from rural communities and communities that may be seen as attractive. They are real concerns, but we should be able to come up with solutions for them.
In the Highlands, we have mapped homelessness services and spoken to professionals in voluntary agencies, and the professional opinion is that people are likely to present as homeless in the Highlands despite having no local connections. The general view of the task force was that people would not present as homeless in areas with which they did not have a local connection but, anecdotally and from what we have been told by agencies that work with homeless people in the Highlands, the Highlands and possibly other rural authorities are the exceptions to that rule. We would need to do more research into that, because we cannot pick up the full picture from the statistics that we keep. A number of people are not recorded unless they are assessed as being in priority need, so we need to do more research. However, we are concerned that there could be problems in the Highlands.
Do you think that those problems will be restricted to Highland Council and other rural authorities? I have spoken to representatives of North Lanarkshire Council and I know that they think that they might have some difficulties with the number of people who move between local authority areas. Although we do not want to restrict that, some of those people will be the most vulnerable and perhaps the most difficult members of society. They could move around from one local authority area to another without getting the support they need to address the reasons why they are vulnerable or causing difficulties in their community.
It is right to be concerned about that and to raise that concern now. Our responsibility is to work with the Executive to scope the extent of the problem and come up with an answer. That could involve providing extra resources for additional support, or, for some areas, there could come a point at which the impact is so unmanageable that it threatens the sustainability and balance of a community. We have to keep an eye on that, but I am not sure whether we will reach that point. As David Goldie pointed out, we need to do fairly detailed research and see if we can map the problem out.
COSLA is having discussions with the Executive and has made two different proposals for how the problem could be addressed. I ask Alan McKeown to tell the committee more about those proposals and any discussions COSLA has had with the Executive and how COSLA's suggestions have been received so far.
We have proposed two fairly simple solutions. One uses a sliding scale for proportionality, so if a local authority has an increased demand that it needs to meet, it would receive increased resources. Yesterday, we made the point to the Finance Committee that the local connection issue does not affect the overall size of the pot. It affects instead the distribution of the pot, so we need to ensure that any distribution system includes a formula that provides flexibility. The committee will be familiar with our second proposal, which mirrors what happens when the right to buy is suspended. It would require the programme to be reviewed if certain triggers were met. Our first proposal should happen regardless, and the second should be used as a backstop. We have to balance the needs of the individual and the community, which is tricky.
Does Glasgow City Council see a particular problem for cities? Cities often attract homeless people for all sorts of reasons. Does David Comley think that the problem will become more acute if councils cannot refer people back to where they originally came from?
I can speak only for Glasgow, rather than for cities in general. The evidence suggests that there is little movement into the city by homeless people. Well over 90 per cent of our homelessness presentations are from people with a local connection, so movement into the city does not seem to be a problem. In the event that the pattern changed, we would want the same kind of safeguards that our COSLA colleagues suggested, but we do not see a particular difficulty at this point.
The issue of resources appears to be a common thread running through the discussions that we have had this morning. Glasgow City Council's submission states:
The simple answer is that from COSLA's point of view the bill is deliverable in that it does not propose any immediate extension in the priority need categories beyond those that are being applied, almost without exception, throughout Scotland. The only caveat is that issues around intentionality are not about scale, but about revenue funding for support. We are talking about small numbers so there is not a significant capital investment issue there. There still has to be a pretty big question mark over whether supporting people will give us what we need. We are hopeful.
I do not want to play down the revenue aspects that Mark Turley described as being at the soft end, because people need support. However, I do not believe that that is the critical issue. People need support largely because they are homeless or in need of housing; if we give them the housing, the need for support disappears. The expensive bit will be the hard end, which is getting the houses themselves. Over the past few years in Highland Council region, between £10 million and £11 million a year has been spent from the Communities Scotland budget on housing development. However, to meet the demand that we have estimated, that sum needs to increase to about £23 million or £24 million a year over the next five years, which more than doubles the current budget. There has been no indication that that increase will happen.
The jury has to be out on this matter. It simply reinforces Mark Turley's point about the timing of changes.
There are concerns about the money that is attached to the bill. To date, we have seen already-published budget figures, which is as good as the current situation can be, given what we know and the fact that we have not gone into those figures in any detail.
Mark Turley touched earlier on the 10-year programme, ending in 2012, to abolish priority need. On one level, one could say that, given the resources, the programme is too ambitious and unworkable. However, it should not be. It is all dependent on ensuring that resources are available to increase the amount of affordable housing.
We are yet to be convinced that there will be a significant level of savings and that, if they are made, they can be realised.
I want to balance that response a little by pointing out that the homelessness task force made 59 recommendations. The bill deals with only five of them, although admittedly they are very important ones.
So it is only one small piece of the jigsaw. The rest of the jigsaw will have to be put together to ensure that even modest savings are made.
A lot of people might come into the system as a result of their ability to access services through it. For example, Highland Council lost contact with 170 of those who applied to us as homeless last year, because, for one reason or another, they were not in priority need or did not fall into one of the categories and did not feel that they were likely to be housed through the system. The evidence from research that we did in our day centre for the homeless is that a number of people have not presented officially as homeless. There is the potential that people will present as homeless as they feel more confident that doing so will result in their accessing housing and a service. However, as with many such matters, that is difficult to quantify.
COSLA would prefer to tease that out sooner rather than later so that we can bottom out the costs and the support needs that go with the problem. Hidden homelessness has been raised. It exists. However, we need to bottom it out so that we do not shift hidden homelessness to hidden costs.
I will switch tack to evictions. The bill focuses on responding to evictions. However, could its scope be expanded to include measures to stop landlords threatening tenants with eviction unless certain actions had been undertaken, such as providing support? Is that realistic, given the staff shortages that some local authorities have?
Your suggestion goes beyond what the task force considered its remit to be, in that it would mean tinkering with the prevailing market forces that determine availability and whether a landlord feels inclined to get into the market in the first place. The provisions in the bill that require local authorities to be notified come under the heading of good-quality preventive work. Most councils take the view that the resources that have been provided have allowed and will allow them to improve the quality of their housing advice and therefore to respond to cases such as threatened evictions in which we might be able to prevent homelessness. To go any further would begin to change the market forces and the attraction for a landlord to get into the business.
We work hard with private landlords to develop the tenure to which Mr Gibson refers, as a demand exists for it. However, a number of the housing options that are open to people in the Highlands are in off-season holiday lets. Those lets are part of the housing market, and they are useful to people for a period of time, but they are never likely to be a long-term housing solution. The private sector letting market will operate in six-month tenancies, for example, and will legitimately, under the current legislation, ask people to leave at the end of that period. There is limited scope for avoiding that.
I was thinking about public sector landlords rather than private landlords.
Our experience is that eviction by public sector landlords has not been an issue: very small numbers of people are involved.
No public sector landlord or registered social landlord would have any concerns about an obligation to offer support, because we do it. It is good housing management practice. There is nothing in eviction for us. We want to prevent it as much as possible.
I support that. The current safeguards under legislation that the court has to apply are adequate.
Do you support the bill's provisions on repossession and eviction?
Glasgow City Council does.
The other witnesses should not be shy.
We will take their silence as a yes.
How will the housing capital expenditure that has been announced for the next four years, and the bill's provisions, affect those on normal housing waiting lists and transfer lists?
Two lines in the budget are of interest. There is an increase in the development funding budget line. Although if we strip out inflation that increase is not huge, it will presumably result in most council areas getting slightly more development funding. However, most councils would agree with Highland Council's view that, to make significant changes in the priority need definitions, development funding would probably need to be doubled, not increased by a few per cent, over the next few years.
To put that into context, in the Highlands, we have 2,000 people who have been assessed as being in medical priority need, 1,900 who lack or share facilities in existing accommodation, 1,700 people who live in overcrowded accommodation and 150 people who live in caravans. Housing is a big problem. We need the resources to resolve it. We will not solve it by changing the administrative system.
As none of the witnesses wants to make any final, brief points, I thank them for attending. Sometimes, such panel sessions can be difficult. We appreciate how courteous you were to each other and the fact that we managed to get through the questions that we wanted ask within the time that we allotted. As I said before, if you want to follow up anything with us, we would be interested to hear from you.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I reconvene the meeting. We have our second panel session on evidence for the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill. I welcome our witnesses. From the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations we have David Bookbinder, the policy and practice officer, and David Alexander, the deputy director. From the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland, we have Nick Fletcher, the policy and public affairs officer, and John Mills, the housing manager for allocations for homelessness for Fife Council. Bill Robertson, from the Association of Directors of Social Work has submitted his apologies and regrets that he is unable to attend.
The SFHA was a member of the homelessness task force, which gave detailed consideration to all the issues that appear in the bill. Therefore, the consultation period came after an extensive period of deliberation. On the bill's proposals, our consultees highlighted several areas on which more work is needed, particularly issues about the balance between the rights and responsibilities of people in the intentionally homeless category. We highlighted areas where the bill requires to be carefully teased out because provisions are not expressed in a way that we and our members are confident of.
The CIHS is happy with the consultation process. We were given plenty of time to respond to the consultation document that arose from the homelessness task force's report and there was enough time to respond to the bill's detail. I would echo what David Alexander said about the bill not picking up particular issues. However, the evidence-taking process will deal with those.
You listened to the earlier evidence, so I will concentrate on the abolition of the priority need provision. It is clear from the earlier evidence and the written evidence from the SFHA and the CIHS that the difficulty will be in supply meeting the demand that the bill will generate. Can you add to your written submissions by saying how that balance might be achieved and what resources will be required?
We endorse the view of the previous witnesses that the phased abolition of priority need must be tied in with what we hope will be an increased level of resources to provide accommodation for the unspecified and unknown increases in the level of demand. It is difficult to quantify the level of demand. The task force spent some time considering the implications of changing the definition of priority, but it was impossible to quantify the increase in the level of demand. Therefore, we are dealing with an unknown quantity.
We support the abolition of priority need and its phasing out over a 10-year period. We think that the phasing out must be done over a long period because of resource issues. As David Alexander and the previous witnesses said, it is difficult to quantify what the demand will be. Number crunching exercises give various figures, but it is difficult to estimate the increased demand. That is why we want the removal of priority need to be a phased process, which should be monitored carefully. It is good that there will be a halfway stage before the final stage.
It is important to acknowledge that there will be increased pressure on the provision of permanent accommodation. However, there are already high-pressure areas for public sector housing at a local level. The removal of priority need will exacerbate that situation and will significantly influence the development of local authorities' housing strategies for the next 12 to 18 months. Therefore, the removal of priority need will impact not just on a local authority area, but on areas of housing that are already under pressure, particularly local housing lists.
The CIHS's written submission gave interesting statistics about shortfall, how information is gathered and double counting, which is when people present themselves as homeless more than once. I take it from that that the figures that we have cannot always be relied on to be entirely accurate. Is the institute or its members working with the Executive to find ways of gathering information that is accurate and that will allow local authorities and registered social landlords to plan for the expected increases with some certainty, rather than with the uncertainty that exists now?
The current work in all local authority areas in Scotland to carry out a homelessness needs assessment, which has to be robust, must pick up on anticipated changes through the bill, not just through the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. In Fife, for example, we have deliberately delayed our homelessness needs assessment until we can see the impact of the 2001 act. We are trying to anticipate the impact of the bill. The figures need to be more thoroughly researched and the Executive must be provided with a robust picture of current and anticipated homelessness needs throughout Scotland.
My colleague Linda Fabiani asked about intentionality. As she said, last week the committee took evidence from Scottish Executive officials who explained that the intention behind the bill's proposals was that a local authority would continue always to have responsibility for providing housing for people unless they found housing for themselves. Do you support those proposals? Do you share the concerns of the local authority representatives who gave evidence this morning?
That was the issue on which most concern was expressed when we consulted our members. We feel that the principle that was outlined in the consultation paper that preceded the bill, which was that the homelessness measures should not prejudice sound housing management practices, has not been followed in the detail of the bill. We have some alternative suggestions about the way in which the virtually open-ended commitment to provide accommodation could be dealt with, which David Bookbinder will describe.
The SFHA suggested a couple of options in relation to the last-tier duty once the short SST has broken down. It is worth emphasising the fact that we fully support the plank of the initial proposals that offered a short SST for people who are intentionally homeless. We have some issues concerning the detail of it, but we fully support it. Regarding the next tier—the on-going duty, when that tier breaks down—one option may be to make it a power of local authorities to provide further accommodation rather than a duty on them. A further option may be to limit that duty so that the duty is not there if the short SST failed because a landlord took specific recovery action. However, we are very interested in COSLA's further option, about which we heard this morning, concerning the possibility of delaying the implementation of that part of the bill until suitable models of accommodation and support for that small but quite difficult group of tenants could be found.
The CIHS supports the principle that people should be given as much support as possible in maintaining their tenancy. When we considered the consultation paper on the proposed bill, we thought that the idea of intentionality was to try to provide that kind of support to the more challenging households—the households with bigger issues. We think that those households need support. We had to consider whether applying intentionality criteria is the best way in which to go about that or whether there is another way of addressing people's support needs.
Will local authorities or housing associations need some guidance or definition that they can use to assess when they can no longer provide a tenancy and when specialist support such as the Dundee families project model or another model should be considered? Are further examination and discussion of that with the Executive needed?
Through the supporting people programme and transitional housing benefit, local authorities and their partners are developing different ways of providing floating support and resident support or provision. Further time must be allowed for best practice to be developed.
I will take up two aspects of intentionality, one of which relates to employment rules and was brought out in Glasgow City Council's submission. People who move area to take up employment can be trammelled by intentionality. That is different from other aspects of intentionality. Should the bill contain specific early provisions to deal with that problem, which was identified in a court decision back in 1987?
I admit that I have not seen that court decision. I will return to the first issue of whether a local authority should be given a new power to investigate intentionality. In general, we need some clear guidance—and preferably regulation—on when local authorities should and should not use that power, so that we have some equality throughout the country.
The SFHA's paper talks about whether the arrangements under the bill will be probationary short tenancies. Will David Bookbinder or David Alexander expand on the SFHA's concerns and how the SFHA wants the bill to be changed?
Our main concern is that if the aim is that the short SST that is given to a household that has previously been intentionally homeless should include an incentive for members of the household to conduct themselves in such a way as to make the tenancy work and that a sanction should hang over them if they do not co-operate, the bill does not achieve that aim because the security of tenure aspects of the proposed short SST are exactly the same as those of the full Scottish secure tenancy.
Was that the intention of the housing task force? Do the CIHS representatives—they are the more technical people, if I can put it that way—have a view on the matter?
I share David Bookbinder's concerns, from an operational management point of view. There has to be protection for vulnerable households in those situations, but there also need to be incentives to take and accept support and ameliorate whatever has caused the problem of intentionality in the first place. If the proposal in the bill does not allow for that to happen, that needs to be carefully considered.
I am frantically looking back through the task force recommendations. I was a member of the task force and we expected the SSST to be similar in form to a probationary tenancy, for the reasons that David Bookbinder has highlighted.
I am interested in the part of the CIHS submission on intentionality, which Nick Fletcher and John Mills have talked about, and the suggestion that there should be a support needs assessment and that the intentionality aspect should be removed. Nick Fletcher said that a key factor in whether the local authority has a duty to accommodate would be an acceptance of that support. What would happen if the support was not accepted and there was therefore no duty to accommodate? What would happen to that family? Could they move to the neighbouring authority as there is no longer any local connection requirement? Could they move, for example, from South Lanarkshire to North Lanarkshire? Would the whole process start all over again? Everyone has expressed worry to some extent that the suspension of local connection might mean that some local authority areas would be more pressured than others by people turning up. Those areas often have a particularly low amount of social rented housing.
There may be potential for that to happen. If someone's acceptance of the support is part of the requirement to accommodate and they do not accept that support, one could go back to the requirement in the 2001 act to provide temporary accommodation for people who are intentionally homeless. That might negate the effect of people moving about. We might find that people move about to try to exercise their rights, for example, from North Lanarkshire to South Lanarkshire.
And then to Glasgow and then to Clydebank.
There might be something in that.
It is true to say that local connection is not a frequently invoked test. The local connection statistics are such that local connection is by far the least significant of the discriminating factors in determining whether a local authority has responsibility. Our worry is that the premature abolition of the local connection criterion would create additional problems for a small number of authorities, which are, generally speaking, the very authorities that have resource problems in any case.
Still on the local connection theme, I asked the representatives from local authorities about the impact that the bill will have on their normal waiting lists and transfer lists. Do you have a feeling for how it will impact on the waiting lists and transfer lists of your members, especially on RSLs that are community based, RSLs that work in small areas as co-operatives, and RSLs that use local connection as a criterion on which to house people, as some do even though they are given bad marks by Communities Scotland for doing so? In particular, how will the bill affect areas such as Glasgow, where the local authority does not have any houses of its own? In that case, the onus will be put completely on RSLs which, in light of the stock transfer philosophy, will to a large extent be locally based organisations?
I would not want to exaggerate the effect of the local connection changes in themselves. Good housing management practice and the regulatory expectations of Communities Scotland require RSLs to consider the needs of applicants whatever their origin, so the abolition of the local connection criterion should not cause huge problems. As I say, the problem is more deep rooted—it is the problem of areas that have an insufficient quantity of houses to allocate. The problems are not specifically rural; they are found at a sub-local authority level. In Glasgow, there are huge differences in the pattern of supply and demand. Those problems will be amplified by the proposed local connection changes.
If the bill's proposals are fully resourced over time, there should be no effect on existing tenants—some of whom may have been seeking a transfer for a while—or on waiting list applicants. We think that it will be the same for RSLs and local authorities. If the measures are not fully resourced, statutory responsibilities will have to come first. Obviously, local authorities have a key responsibility, but section 5 of the 2001 act places a duty on RSLs to house people who are referred to them by councils. That has to come before anything else. If the bill's proposals are not resourced, one can only imagine that that will have a severe impact on people's chances of being housed. It will affect people who are on the waiting list and existing tenants who want a transfer.
What is your view of the repossession and eviction provisions of the bill? Further, should organisations be required to show what action they have taken or what procedures they have followed to avoid having to evict?
The SFHA fully supports a duty to inform local authorities when repossession action is being taken. We are slightly more anxious about the position that faces hard-pressed local authorities, in terms of both housing and social work. In one local authority area, we tried to develop a protocol for registered social landlords to inform the local authority social work department—particularly where children were involved—when they were about to embark on repossession action. The local authority had to say that it preferred not to enter into such a protocol because it did not yet have the resources to respond in the way that was proposed. We fully support the duty to notify.
The institute endorses those comments. We are considering in detail what can be done to gear housing and other local authority services towards prevention rather than just alleviation of homelessness. The bill's provisions are welcome. They give another dimension to what I call the realignment of homelessness services. Local authorities need to consider carefully whether they have the staffing complement to respond satisfactorily to notifications from landlords in both the private and the public sector. There is an expectation that authorities will respond positively and robustly to such notices, in order to prevent homelessness from occurring. The bill's provisions supplement what local authorities are already trying to do under the 2001 act.
I would like to press you further on the issue of constraints. You have already given evidence to the Executive that the experience of some housing associations is that social work departments are not always in a position to act on information, because of time and resource constraints. Can you say more about your concern that social work departments will not be able to perform the functions that the bill gives them in relation to repossessions and evictions, because of time and resource limitations?
A number of our members have told us that, when they have approached the social work department at the outset of a repossession action, they have not received a response, because of the immense pressures to which the department is subject from all directions. Social work departments may intervene only when the court is about to evict someone. By that stage, both the tenant and the landlord concerned have experienced considerable difficulties. Our concern is that local authority support services should be involved at an earlier stage. We do not suggest that they should never be involved. The key issue is the timing of their involvement. Our members' experience thus far is that intervention by social work departments comes at a late stage.
It is rather like firefighting.
Yes.
That is helpful.
It is interesting that our current witnesses are expressing more concern than the previous witnesses did about the availability of staff support, should the bill be approved. The previous witnesses seemed not to think that that was a concern. When dealing with any piece of legislation, we need to be concerned not only about funding, but about whether staff will be available to implement it.
It is good practice for local authorities to seek to act as corporate bodies wherever possible. In the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, much more attention was paid to corporate duties in relation to matters such as local housing strategies. We should build on that. The burden should not be placed solely on housing departments, but should be shared by other departments.
We must also highlight issues that arise from the joint future agenda. When assessments are carried out to satisfy duties under the bill, they should be single shared assessments rather than simply housing support assessments. Inevitably, that will call for joined-up assessment and the delivery of resources from various services, not only housing departments. We are committed to that. Delivery is the crucial issue.
Previous witnesses have mentioned to us that local authority departments will want to perform their statutory duties first. Departments will not be overly enthusiastic about devoting money from budgets that are already under strain. You want an holistic approach to the allocation of resources. Given the significant resources that are required to implement the bill's aims, would a longer time scale for implementation be appropriate or should more resources be made available to ensure that implementation happens sooner rather than later?
We would prefer sufficient resources to be made available for housing and housing-related programmes generally. We cannot stress strongly enough that the bill is only part of the overall policy apparatus to meet housing needs. The SFHA has called for 10,000 rented homes to be provided every year. At present, only around 5,000 are provided. The programme must be doubled to meet Scotland's housing needs. Allied to that is the point that support needs must be financed. The big danger is that the support packages that are tied to the SSST—those packages are a strong feature of the bill—will not be financed adequately, which will result in the bill's intentions being frustrated.
So you want an increase in the moneys available to provide affordable housing. Ultimately, if there are not sufficient houses, there will always be an issue.
We want an increase in the moneys for both housing and support.
Resources can always be made available to build housing, but what about the staff who are required to implement the bill? How long will it take to train them? Local authorities are already under stress and strain on housing, social work and education and find it difficult to meet their current statutory obligations. What lead time would be appropriate for the additional resource requirements for staff?
That would depend on the level of skills that was required. The homelessness task force expressed concern about the number of support staff and the level of training that would be required to deliver the wide range of support services. The point has been made that the approach would not be a one-size-fits-all one and that different types of support would be required for different types of vulnerable households. In relation to the further and higher education that will be needed to provide the level of skills that is required to deliver those support packages, we need to be gearing up now to deliver services in three or four years' time.
The CIHS is considering the issue carefully. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 challenges local authorities—specifically homeless persons officers—to stop policing homelessness and to start advising and supporting. That is a culture change for staff and we cannot underestimate the challenge that it represents. The bill takes that a stage further. The process of changing staff thinking and attitudes towards homeless people should have begun in the many local authorities that are undertaking homelessness strategy development and the training that goes with it. However, it will take time for that to bed in and result in service delivery improvements. We are looking for a two-year period for implementation.
With previous witnesses, we have touched on the issue of hidden homelessness. How can you budget for that? Can it be budgeted for? Do you think that, when resources are provided, allowance should be made for the possibility of an improvement in housing supply leading to more people who have disappeared presenting? Do you think that there should be a financial cushion for that?
I will make one point before answering your question. Between 40 and 45 per cent of lets that the housing associations and registered social landlords provide are to people without a home of their own. Interestingly, only a minority of those people comes through the statutory route. We are providing accommodation for people who do not present as homeless to the local authorities: single people without priority need or couples without children. The local authorities will not prioritise those people, so they are coming directly to the RSLs. A large proportion of the people who are currently housed by RSLs never form part of any official homelessness statistics. To some extent, therefore, the abolition of priority need builds on what is already best practice, in so far as RSLs are already providing accommodation and support for that category of household.
I am asking whether there should be a margin for error.
The homelessness task force considered the potential impact of changing the categories. However, there was no reliable source of information to say what the impact would be of extending the priority need categories to the point of eventually abolishing priority need. Nonetheless, I hope that the administration of homelessness will improve because of the more straightforward access channel. That should ensure that fewer people present as repeat homeless or get lost from the system altogether.
I echo what David Alexander says. It is difficult to establish the level of hidden homelessness. I hope that the process of phasing out the priority needs categories will give the Executive and local authorities an opportunity to monitor the extra demand that is likely to be created from people who are staying at home with their parents or relatives and who are not presenting as homeless because they know that, under the current legislation, little or no help will be available to them. We have to be careful. The 10-year time scale for phasing out the priority needs categories will give us an opportunity to see what the impact will be and what demand will be created. It will allow us to put in the resources to provide the extra temporary and permanent accommodation that will be needed for people who are presenting as homeless.
Would you look to the Scottish Executive to fund comprehensive research into this field?
I said earlier that local authorities are carrying out comprehensive homeless needs assessments. We have asked for research to be carried out into repeat homelessness and hidden homelessness issues. The role of the homelessness monitoring group in examining the outputs from all the homeless needs assessments will be critical in trying to get a Scottish picture. I think that this might be the first time that such research has been carried out throughout Scotland; I certainly cannot remember the last time that it was attempted. The research will be worth waiting for as we get into next spring. We will take a position based on what the authorities are saying their resource requirements might be to satisfy their duties under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 and on what the implications of the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill will be.
I want to explore the issue of the hidden homeless and the fact that housing associations already house homeless people who would not normally present. I am concerned that local connections might disappear. Some housing associations have a separate homeless category in their applications policy. Although they do not have a statutory duty to do so, they are housing people who have presented as homeless to the local authority and who have also applied to the housing association. Do you think that that situation will disappear? Do you think that housing association allocations for the homeless will come about purely through local authority referral?
I very much doubt that. At the moment, there are two routes by which homeless people might be housed. One is through nomination by the local authority and the other is by direct application. Under section 5 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, the duty on an RSL to house by referral from a local authority is much more robust than was the old nomination procedure, but it is inevitable that there will still be direct presentations to RSLs. I hope that RSLs and local authorities will have good working arrangements whereby, if possible, a local authority would know about the presentation and would be able to make an assessment, where that was needed, without the pillar-to-post moving around of people. RSLs are always keen to avoid asking people who have presented directly to them to go to the local authority. On the other hand, the local authority has a legitimate need to keep tabs on homelessness figures. The two routes will still be available.
Sometimes an RSL's definition of someone being homeless is wider than the statutory definition that local authorities use, although some local authorities enhance that definition. I worry that people will be disadvantaged by the proposals and that the hidden homeless will remain.
There would be a concern if everything had to go through the local authority channel. I hope that that will not be the case. As David Bookbinder said, the current experience is that direct applications are at least as important a route for people finding accommodation as the local authority route.
That is an interesting point. Local authorities will have to have monitoring and recording systems for recording prevention of homelessness, not just for recording the statutorily homeless. It is not the case that every potentially homeless applicant who might be statutorily homeless goes directly to a housing association, but such instances must be recorded in some way by the homeless persons officer to indicate that homelessness has been prevented. Recording systems need to be introduced to take that into account as part of the strategy on homeless needs assessment.
I have a final question, although other members may also make final points. It might be stating the obvious to say that two different kinds of homelessness seem to be emerging. Some homelessness arises because in certain places there is a lack of affordable housing. In other places, such as the area that I represent, there is affordable housing that might not be desirable and there are families whose housing problem is a symptom of a broader problem.
I endorse what a previous witness said. The task force report contained a large number of recommendations, of which the bill implements only three. The task force spent a long time examining the issues that you mentioned—the wider causes of homelessness and its links to a range of other issues. We strongly believe that addressing supply-side shortages is the key to answering one type of homelessness. If the shortfall is to be met and that aspect of homelessness is to be tackled adequately, the provision of the resources that we have discussed is essential. No one is under any illusions about the fact that the problem of homelessness is much more wide ranging in its cause and its impact. It can be addressed only through multi-agency solutions, which need to be adequately funded.
A reasonable response to the argument for more resources to support people who are under pressure in relation to housing would be to say that resources should go in at an earlier stage—for example, to support women who flee violence or to address drug problems within a community. It is important to focus on community needs and to stress the individual needs within that community.
It is also important that, in addressing the supply side, we look at the location and quality of what is supplied. In our submission, we mention the danger that, if there is an increased demand from homeless people requiring housing, there might be an incentive to push those people into the lower demand area of housing. To ensure that that does not happen, we need to look at the supply. If we try to push people into particular areas of housing where demand is not high, we will not meet the social inclusion targets that we have discussed and we will not meet people's specific support needs.
There are people within those low-demand areas who want to move out. There is an issue about sustaining and regenerating those communities.
Yes, that is an important issue.
I thank the witnesses for their attendance. That was a productive session. If the witnesses wish to pursue any matters further, we would be happy to hear from them.
Meeting continued in private until 12:15.
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