Equal Opportunities Committee
Meeting date: Thursday, December 13, 2012
Official Report
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Having and Keeping a Home
Agenda item 2 is consideration of the Government’s response to our inquiry report, “Having and Keeping a Home: steps to preventing homelessness among young people”. Members will have read the Government minister’s response and the committee is invited either to note the Scottish Government’s response or to consider whether to seek progress reports from stakeholders with a view to considering such reports in around six months’ time and at suggested intervals after that.
What are committee members’ views?
The response is good in some parts but disappointing in others. We set out some specific questions but, although the information provided is helpful, the questions are not actually addressed.
I understand that there are timing issues with welfare reform, and with the community care grant in particular, but it is confusing that the evidence given to the Welfare Reform Committee this week seems not so much to contradict as to provide more information than the response given to this committee. It might not be appropriate to ask for additional information from the minister at this time, but I think that we should leave open the option of doing so in, I suggest, some time around April.
For instance, I welcome the decision to allow people to apply for a community care grant eight weeks before taking up a tenancy rather than the six weeks proposed by the United Kingdom Government. However, if I have read the evidence correctly—obviously, I am not a member of that committee—the minister said to the Welfare Reform Committee that, if a council’s social fund money has run out when someone makes an application, the applicant will not be allowed to reapply for another 28 days. If that is the case, the time that people will need to wait to apply for a community care grant will be down to four weeks, which will be less than the UK Government’s proposal. I think that we require a bit more information on that, but I do not believe that it is appropriate to ask for it at this time. Although the response was helpful in parts, I was slightly confused because of the evidence given to other committees.
Siobhan McMahon’s points are well made. When we are talking about the most vulnerable people, a measure of forward planning should be built in, but that does not seem to have been the case from what we have heard. The issue can be complicated because the local authority may have a statutory obligation for people who are in third-party accommodation prior to taking up a tenancy with the authority directly, so there may be a whole range of overlapping issues. However, we need to encourage a measure of considered forward planning rather than the ad hoc arrangements that we have heard about. Good practice is fine if good fortune means that everything comes together, but there were instances in which people were clearly being abandoned in houses of which no one—let alone a vulnerable young person—should have been given the tenancy. I think that we need to keep a watching brief on the issue, particularly with regard to the implications of welfare reform.
I agree. I found parts of the response very good, but others less good and less encouraging. It is important that we keep a watching brief on what is happening.
If there are no further comments, do we agree that we will follow up on the response and continue to follow up on it at regular intervals thereafter? Siobhan McMahon has suggested that we have our first follow-up in April, which should be okay, although that will depend on whether it fits in with our business programme. Do we agree that we will look at the issue again around April?
Members indicated agreement.