Rural Housing Inquiry
Agenda item 3 is our inquiry into rural housing. I welcome Gavin Corbett, who is policy manager with Shelter. The written evidence that Shelter submitted at the start of the inquiry has been circulated to committee members. We will not have an opening statement from Gavin, but will move straight to questions—so it is a pity that members, although not all of them, have chosen this particular time to absent themselves from the committee table. Luckily, Elaine Murray, who is first on the list, is here.
An issue that is prevalent in my constituency in Dumfries is the effect of housing policy on registered social landlords. We have no council housing stock in Dumfries and Galloway—it was all transferred some years ago. The Shelter submission is some months old, but in it you refer to 35 to 40 per cent of allocations going to homeless applicants who are referred by the council. You suggest that much of the discussion around the problems is poorly evidenced.
I offer you some recent statistics from Dumfries and Galloway. In September this year, there were some 8,000 people on the registered social landlords' waiting lists. Between April and September, there were 650 applicants under the homeless section, of whom 350 had been referred on by the council to the registered social landlords.
The previous year, only 280 additional new units were built—so, in a sense, the referrals exceed the building. There are four housing associations in the area. In September, Loreburn Housing Association allocated 40 per cent of places to homeless referrals. In 2006-07—some two years ago—Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership, which is the biggest registered social landlord and which got the council housing stock, allocated 57 per cent to homeless referrals. More than 25 per cent of Irvine Housing Association's allocations and 50 per cent of Homes for Scotland's allocations were to homeless referrals.
That creates a significant problem in an area such as Dumfries and Galloway—a mix of urban and rural communities—in that an awful lot of people with housing needs do not seem to be getting anywhere. The Parliament passed legislation that we thought was a flagship policy, but it does not seem to be working in Dumfries and Galloway. Do you have any comments on that?
I know Dumfries and Galloway reasonably well—Shelter has a project there, as you know. The council is at the leading edge in terms of local authorities that are progressing their commitment to the 2012 target—it is ahead of the game and is quite progressive. Housing associations such as the DGHP and Loreburn have been pretty effective at taking referrals in a way that housing associations throughout Scotland have not always been, which is a good-news story.
On housing supply, the reason why there is so much competition between people on waiting lists and homeless people is because we have sold too much of the stock in Dumfries and Galloway, and we are not continuing to build enough units even to replace that stock, never mind to keep up with demand. In the short term, that means that there is competition and sometimes the perception of unfairness. In the long-term, housing supply needs to keep pace with demand; the needs of one group of people who are in need should not be placed against another group so that they have to scrap it out.
I accept that far too few properties are available to rent in Dumfries and Galloway but, unfortunately, that is the situation after years of the right to buy. The problem is that if a person is referred under section 5 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, they get—at the DGHP, for example—99 points. If a person is seriously disabled and their house is totally inadequate for their needs, they get 75 points. A person who lives in overcrowded conditions with teenage children of the opposite sex sharing a bedroom gets 20 points. There is a perception that the way in which the legislation operates is unfair to people who have housing needs other than being homeless.
The way in which Dumfries and Galloway Council, working with the housing associations, has chosen to allocate or distribute points is a decision for the council. That is not covered in the legislation on homelessness; other authorities do it in other ways.
There is growing recognition that there are ways of meeting the needs of homeless people in an area other than by simply providing a council tenancy or a housing association tenancy. For example, the Scottish Government has just closed a consultation on how we can better use private landlords. I know from our project in Dumfries and Galloway that several private landlords are interested in long-term letting and can provide accommodation in some of the communities in which no social housing is left. That could be explored more fully.
There is growing recognition that prevention of homelessness needs to come further up the agenda. We can do an awful lot more to ensure that people do not get into the crisis situation when all they need is a social let. Scottish Government officials have done some modelling on the impact that measures involving private landlords in the prevention of homelessness could have in reducing the pressure on social landlords. I certainly do not think that the pressure that we see right now need continue or accelerate in the future.
I, too, am interested in the issue of private landlords, to which you referred. However, on preventing homelessness, one of the problems with the current legislation is that people do not have to be roofless to count as homeless. Increasingly, people who are in housing need, but who are in a property, are being referred through the homelessness route, because that is the only way that they can get into the system. In a sense, we are beginning to ratchet up the problem. My heart sinks when constituents with housing problems come to see me, because there is very little that I can do. Usually, I suggest that they see whether the council will deem their accommodation so unsuitable that they can apply for housing through the homelessness route. There is a build-up of pressure there.
On private landlords, in rural areas of my constituency in particular, big estates that include quite a lot of social rented housing play an important role in providing rented accommodation. The only problem that I sense is, why would a private landlord want to offer a longer, more secure tenancy to someone coming in through the homelessness route, given that they might be more vulnerable and might have more problems than someone who applies for a six-month short assured tenancy because they saw the property advertised in the local newspaper?
I have to stop you there, Elaine. There is still a mobile phone or BlackBerry switched on. Will everyone please check again and switch them off if they are on? That applies to everybody who is in the committee room, including visitors in the public seats. Mobile phones and BlackBerrys and all such electronic devices must be switched off, because they interfere with the sound system.
If there is competition for rented housing, a landlord can put an advert in the local paper offering a short assured tenancy for six months. What would encourage a private landlord to offer the property for a year—or whatever length of time—to someone who has come through the homelessness route? We have required all landlords to be registered. They are now responsible for the behaviour of their tenants; they could be struck off the register if their tenants behave in an antisocial way. In a sense, we are building up problems.
There is a lot in what you have said. I will try to answer your questions briefly. We have spoken to the Scottish Association of Landlords and the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association about incentives. You asked why landlords would be interested in longer-term tenancies. Many private landlords, particularly in rural areas, already let their properties for longer terms. Some, although not all, do so from a sense of social obligation.
SAL and the SRPBA tell us that landlords' primary interest is in security of income. If they can secure the income stream, say from housing benefit, they will live with tenancies of longer than six months, although not with secure tenancies—everybody has recognised that that is not going to happen in the private rented sector. With longer-term tenancies, there would be less turnover, so there would be fewer issues about managing voids. The council might also agree to support a tenant if they had additional needs, which is an additional resource on which landlords cannot otherwise draw. There are certainly ways to create a package in which some landlords—it would only need to be one in 10—would want to participate. Most landlords might be happy letting properties on short assured tenancies to people who come in through various other routes, but we would have to involve only one in 10 landlords to make a significant difference to the options that are available to councils in discharging their duty to homeless people.
The idea of the homelessness route is a common theme, but from the point of view of Shelter's clients, applying as homeless is not an easy option. People immediately surrender a lot of power in that situation. There is a sense that it is somehow just another route for people to get into social housing, but they are giving up all say over their future housing allocation. They have very little choice, and they can be in temporary accommodation for months or years on end. It is not something that people choose to do lightly. There is still a strong incentive for people to wait on a waiting list, given the choice that they have over the house that they eventually get. That still matters.
I wish to raise a side issue. You refer in your written evidence to the Dumfries & Galloway Small Communities Housing Trust. I understand that it is one of the organisations that could, if it were to buy or sell properties, take advantage of the rural housing burden. Is that correct?
Yes.
Could you expand on the extent to which that facility is being used? Has it been a success—in general, not just in Dumfries and Galloway?
I do not have the numbers before me. The rural housing burden is a powerful mechanism, and I suspect that it has been little used. A body must register as a rural housing body first of all. It could be a housing association or a trust such as the Dumfries & Galloway Small Communities Housing Trust. It may choose to apply the burden for individual properties or a batch of properties if it wishes to secure them for long-term use as affordable housing. I do not have information on the number of burdens that have been applied. I suspect that it is on a relatively small scale at this stage. However, the burden is still a powerful mechanism when it is used.
I want to move on to one of the main subjects that we invited you here to talk to us about. The headline bullet point in your written submission is about rural housing enablers. It would be useful for the committee to hear from you how your proposed programme of rural housing enablers would work in practice. How useful would it be? How do you envisage it being funded? More important perhaps, given the current economic circumstances, do you still consider the idea to be as appropriate as you did when you submitted your evidence? Is it manageable, given what is happening now?
My experience with rural housing enablers has come directly from managing a pilot project in Dumfries and Galloway for a number of years, which was called Shelter housing action with rural communities. It was one of a number of enablers in Scotland.
The critical point is that provision is fragmented. There are parts of an enabler system in Highland; there is one in the Western Isles, and there has been one in Dumfries and Galloway—although it has perhaps been taken up by the trust there. There are bits and pieces elsewhere, including in Moray and Aberdeenshire. There is no overall programme, however. Some very rural areas, highland Perthshire, for example, have no such programme. There are other areas in the south of Scotland without provision. That contrasts starkly with England and Wales, where there is a single programme funded from a single source. The idea there is one of a network of enablers. We thought that odd, on the face of it, given the greater pressures on rural areas in Scotland, which is the most rural part of the UK. There are obvious housing pressures here, which have led to the committee's inquiry.
Our idea, which we first put forward the best part of a year ago, is to set up a programme co-ordinated by central Government whereby a number of enablers are employed in different parts of rural Scotland, perhaps by a local body or perhaps by the central body—that question is less important than the enablers being there. The programme would be funded partly by central Government and partly by local authorities.
The second part of the idea is really important. My experience in Dumfries and Galloway suggests that it is critical to have the local authority on board and committed to the idea of an enabler and to using the work that it produces. For us, and for everyone who is involved in policy, the local government concordat and the development of single outcome agreements has formed a sort of hub for local service planning. The balance between local and central funding might change as a result, perhaps with greater discretion being given to local authorities to use or develop their funding locally—there are sources for that.
It is important to have central support, perhaps including training, the development of common tools such as survey mechanisms and methods, and the sharing of information across Scotland. That could be co-ordinated centrally, either by central Government or by giving the task to an agency, such as the Rural Housing Service or another organisation with an interest in rural housing.
The current climate makes those aspects even more important. Changes in the housing market can, for example, provide opportunities for accessing land and, in the absence of private development, community ownership might become more of a pressing issue. However, we need local capacity to tap such opportunities.
What feedback have you received from Government on why there has been no progress on this matter? Is it still carrying out research or is it simply unconvinced by the idea?
The Government has been mildly supportive. For example, an exercise that it has commissioned on the feasibility of a programme should conclude by mid-October. That suggests to me that there is at least an active interest in the idea and that there are opportunities to find out whether the approach will work. I welcome that and, indeed, have contributed to the research.
What does this approach actually bring to the table? After all, in the various local plans, local authorities are charged to work with all other agencies to identify places for housing and housing development. I wonder whether this really is something different or whether it is just another level of bureaucracy.
The distinctive feature of this approach is its focus on very small communities. Typically, our project in Dumfries and Galloway worked with communities of fewer than 1,000 houses or on plans involving two houses in one place, four houses in another and so on. That is very easy for people working on local plans. However, housing associations—which, through mergers, assimilation and so on, are getting bigger and bigger—find it difficult to fund such schemes.
The independence of the main housing providers is also important. Many communities that have given us feedback on the Dumfries and Galloway project have highlighted the value of working with someone who did not have a vested interest in a particular development and wanted simply to work with them on their own plans. After all, the approach taken by housing associations and local authorities was mainly supply led and usually depended on the organisation having some land or some funding that it wanted to use or make available.
Over the seven or eight years of the project, how many houses were built that would not otherwise have been built?
As everyone knows, rural development can move at a glacial rate and sometimes one has to look at what can be done about that.
We can identify six different developments that happened as a result of the SHARC project. In the project, which extended from Moniaive to the west of the area, we worked with the community, identified a need and helped the community to engage with the local housing association on meeting that need.
The project had other benefits. Community groups made it very clear that, as a result of it, they felt much more confident about dealing with housing providers and local authorities; negotiating their way through rural home ownership grants, rural empty property grants and so on; and engaging with planning departments. Of course, that kind of thing is hard to measure, but it is still a tangible outcome of the work.
Moreover, the Dumfries and Galloway project led directly to the establishment of not only the Dumfries and Galloway small communities housing trust, which is only the second organisation of its kind in Scotland, but a couple of action groups that are progressing housing issues in their area. None of those things would have happened without the project.
What progress are rural councils making towards the 2012 homelessness target? How could Government make that target more deliverable? How effective have rural councils' homelessness prevention strategies been?
I looked at the new information that the Scottish Government published last Monday on the 2007-08 homelessness statistics, particularly at the statistics' rural dimension. As I said in my paper, it is much the same picture as last year. There is no clear split between rural and urban authorities in how effectively they are progressing towards the 2012 target. Some rural authorities are doing best because they are on target or ahead of it—for example, Dumfries and Galloway Council, Highland Council, Argyll and Bute Council and Western Isles Council. Equally, Orkney Islands Council, Moray Council and Perth and Kinross Council are struggling, but so are Glasgow City Council, Aberdeen City Council and Dundee City Council. There is no clear rural-urban split. As I said, some rural authorities are doing well and are ahead of the game, although they have raised many concerns about the targets.
On what more the Scottish Government could do, it could provide more funding for more houses, which is a fundamental issue. There are also issues about the right to buy, particularly in rural areas. Most people here will know that villages in Scotland that once had a healthy social housing stock have virtually nothing left now, but the lost stock has not been replaced. There has been a signal that, as well as suspending the right to buy for new-build housing, the Scottish Government might look favourably on suspending the right to buy for all new tenancies. That would be a radical but welcome step towards preserving the stock for future years. Equally, the Scottish Government has taken important measures to encourage private landlords to take a role, with attached conditions and caveats. That could be particularly useful in rural areas where there is no social housing.
The final question was on the prevention of homelessness. Research that was carried out last year concluded that, across Scotland as a whole, prevention is very much in its infancy. It is not fully embedded in what rural authorities do. I imagine that that will be as true in rural areas as it is in urban areas. There is still a long way to go for authorities to ensure that they regard a homelessness application as a final step when considering an applicant's circumstances rather than necessarily the first step that they take.
Regrettably, there is a perception in some local communities that there is a lack of available housing for local residents because all the local housing is being given to homeless people. How could that perception be addressed?
In a number of ways. It is important to look at the evidence, although I agree with you about the perception issue. For example, when I was a local authority worker, elected members often came to me to say that every allocation in a particular ward had gone to a homeless person in the past year. However, when I looked at the evidence, the situation was nothing like that, although they had a strong perception that it was. I would not dismiss the perception, though, even if is not particularly linked to the information.
At national level, more can be done on attitudes to homelessness. A piece of work that was carried out in the social attitudes survey last year suggested that the general public hold many old-fashioned, stereotypical views of homelessness. I have argued for some time that, just as the various Scottish Executives or Governments have funded awareness campaigns on attitudes towards domestic abuse, for example, the Government might consider doing something similar for homelessness. That work could be done nationally.
Locally, I would hope that local councillors in particular would act as champions of homelessness legislation. That legislation puts Scotland ahead of all European countries in tackling the problem. There is much to be proud of in what we are doing in Scotland. I hope that people in local authorities can act as champions as well as pick up on the negative aspects.
Do you accept, however, that local residence is a huge issue in rural areas that must be addressed, and that it sometimes runs counter to the attempted implementation of other policies?
Yes, but that comes from allocation policy rather than from homelessness. Homelessness legislation requires only that, once an authority has accepted that it will house an applicant, that person is regarded as living in that authority. For example, I used to work in Argyll and Bute, and it would have been legitimate for someone who applied in Oban to be housed 100 miles away in Campbeltown, as long as there was no particularly strong social reason for them to be housed in Oban, although sometimes there would be.
The use of local connection criteria in allocation policies is controversial. When housing associations make allocations, they can give additional weighting to factors such as family or work connections in an area. We cannot directly say to somebody, "We will house you because you're local," because that would raise questions about what constitutes local, but there are ways in which we can give weighting to someone's connections with a community.
Recently, the Government announced the homeowners support fund and other measures to alleviate some of the more serious impacts of the credit crunch. What is Shelter's view of those measures, given today's events?
That fund was announced during the summer, but things have moved on quickly since then. It is a start. It is only £25 million over two years, but it is an increase on the previous £20 million. It adds some money to what used to be called the mortgage to rent scheme, and it also potentially extends eligibility. A feature of the old scheme is that somebody who went to what was Communities Scotland with a mortgage problem would have the property bought and rented back to them at a social rent. The new scheme includes a wider range of rents and also shared equity models. That is sensible, particularly for people who want to get back on to the home ownership ladder. If they convert from 100 per cent ownership to a shared equity model, they will get some breathing space while retaining a stake in the property.
Is there likely to be enough funding for the scheme to be delivered, given the depth of the crisis?
The scheme has always been demand led, so there is scope to extend the funding for it. That reminds me of an answer that the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment gave to one of the questions about the rural budget. The £25 million was allocated as a best guess about the likely demand and I imagine that it can increase in line with demand.
There are some issues about eligibility for the scheme. As with other public policies, we should bear in mind the fact that the scheme should intervene when people have no other option, rather than its responding to every situation in which people have got into mortgage difficulties. Somebody could be in difficulties because they have engaged in a certain form of equity release, for example, and private schemes might be better placed to deal with that. There will always be cut-off points for a public scheme.
I return to the convener's point about local connections. You suggested that myths can flourish in the area of allocations to homeless people and that, to some extent, the reality does not match the perception. You also touched on Orkney Islands Council being a local authority that has struggled to meet its homelessness objectives. In Orkney, there is concern about the removal of local criteria from allocation policies. The population is increasing as the islands attract people from all over for various reasons. How likely is it that the removal of the criteria will put additional pressure on the local authority, which is already struggling to meet its obligations?
Orkney Islands Council is committed to progressive policy in the area but it has a genuine problem with housing supply. A relatively small injection of new housing supply makes a big difference in such places. I would be concerned if the issue that faces places such as Orkney, Moray and Perth and Kinross was extended throughout Scotland. There are certainly hot spots that need an injection of additional housing supply as we move towards 2012. I hope that that adds extra weight to the argument that such places have with central Government.
The abolition of the local connection criteria works both ways. I often hear rural authorities say that they fear that people will move from urban centres to take advantage of the removal of the local connection criteria, but I hear just as often from people in Glasgow and Edinburgh who fear that, because they provide a lot of services, those cities will become a magnet for people who seek to move there. There might be movement in both directions.
The research that was carried out four or five years ago on the potential impact came up with two things. First, it found that flows go both ways—they do not exactly equal each other out, but there is a net effect. Secondly, it found that the flow is relatively small—only about 2 per cent of all homeless applicants are currently referred across authority boundaries. That suggests that the situation is manageable. If there are fears about the local connection being removed and that causing extra pressure, any individual authority can apply to central Government to have the local connection reinstated. That is why future demand is hard to predict. However, that mechanism allows the situation to be coped with if it proves difficult.
Okay. There are no more questions. Thanks very much for coming along today. If, once you leave the committee room, you feel that there is anything that you would have liked to have said but did not—for whatever reason—feel free to write to us. Equally, we may write to you if anything occurs to us once we have discussed your evidence.
Okay. Thank you.