Official Report 305KB pdf
Item 2 concerns the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill, for which members will note that we are the lead committee. We previously agreed to take evidence from Scottish Executive officials to inform our stage 1 report. I welcome the officials who are with us today: Isabel Drummond-Murray, Lindsay Manson, Anna Donald, Murray Sinclair and Catriona Hardman. Perhaps Lindsay Manson will make a brief opening statement before we move to questions.
Members will see from the long title of the bill that its purpose is
Before members ask their questions, I remind them that we have with us today Scottish Executive officials, not ministers, so the questions that we ask should be about the factual basis of the bill. If, at any stage, the officials feel that they have been asked a question that they cannot appropriately answer, we will not press them. We will simply ensure that those matters are pursued with the minister.
In the first instance, the strategic approach to addressing homelessness has been acted on through the development of homelessness strategies by local authorities. Those strategies are currently being developed and the local authorities have been asked to submit them by the end of the financial year, in March 2003.
What does
There is certainly clear evidence of cross-working among local authorities, voluntary organisations, health boards and others to develop homelessness strategies. There are already improvements in practices and in the responses. We are beginning to see more single assessments of homeless people, rather than homeless people being assessed individually by local authority housing departments, then by social work sections, then by the health boards. There are examples of that in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere.
It is fair to say that the bill's theme is legislative widening working in tandem with the assessment of resource implications. That is quite a difficult area because of the revolving-door syndrome. Beyond what is contained in the local authority housing strategies, what action has been or is being taken by the Executive to assess the national resource implications of the measures? What support will need to be given to help local authorities to assess the need and to deal with it?
Initial funding was made available by the Executive to local authorities so that, in the first instance, they could carry out the assessment and develop the strategies. The funding was also made available to increase the availability of temporary accommodation so that local authorities could respond to their early expanded duties under the 2001 act.
Is there a feel at this stage for the total resource implications of putting all of this in place? On a linked point, how does the bill play with the withdrawal of rough sleepers initiative funding, which I think will happen in a couple of years' time?
The rough sleepers initiative funding has not been withdrawn but has now been transferred to local authorities' revenue support grant, so the funding will remain within local authorities' budgets and will be overseen by the local outcome agreements that we have reached with local authorities.
Obviously, it is difficult to assess the cost savings, but is there a feel for how great the percentage savings might be?
No detailed analysis of the cost savings has been done. We will not have the information to do that until we receive the local authority assessments and strategies in March next year. That is why the expansion of the next phase of priority need is not expected to happen until 2006. That is also why the minister's statement will not require to be written until 2005. We will want to have the detailed information, which we know local authorities are collecting at the moment, so that we can make a proper assessment. Local authorities are collecting a fund of information that was not previously available centrally.
You mentioned the on-going work of the homelessness monitoring group. How will the group report back to partner organisations, such as local authorities?
The group has undertaken to submit regular reports. We would expect those to come out annually, roughly. We are not saying specifically that they will come out annually, because particular issues might come up that will influence the timing of the issuing of the reports. The group will report to ministers, but will do so publicly, so the report will be available.
You referred to the enhanced rights and the consequent increase in applications under the bill, which the explanatory notes recognise. We have noted a recent rise in applications as people have become more aware of issues around homelessness. We all recognise that local authorities and registered social landlords will need more resources. How many additional houses will we need to build or modernise to accommodate the increase in demand, and indeed the increased expectations of homeless applicants and people on local authorities' transfer lists?
We expect that the detailed information that we would need to answer that question fully will be contained in the homelessness and local housing strategies. Local authorities have been asked specifically to ensure a strong link between the two. The fact that there is a year's gap between the availability of the homelessness strategy and the availability of the local housing strategy will allow such an assessment to be made. We will seek a response from local authorities in their local housing strategies, taking into account their assessment of homelessness in their areas.
So it is recognised that there will be a need. Obviously, there will be forward planning of the financial resources.
Yes. There is a recognition that there will be a need—there is already a continuing need—for an increase in the supply and quality of housing and for an improvement in how current housing stock is used. It will be important for local authorities to consider not just the top-level number of the houses that they have, but where the appropriate houses for the nature of the problem that they have identified are.
The bill adopts a different approach to the expansion of priority need from that outlined by the task force in its final report. The task force recommended a second stage of expansion of the definition of priority need, which could have included "other vulnerable groups" or individuals
Principally, the decision was made in response to consultation responses, many of which said that age was not a measure of vulnerability and that there was therefore no reason why age should be taken as the second stage rather than anything else. Many respondents felt that it was better for the monitoring group to consider whether there were more appropriate vulnerable groups that could be included. There is still a commitment to expansion, but the question is what that expansion should be.
The expanded definition does not include asylum seekers or refugees. Why not?
I will ask Murray Sinclair to answer that.
As I understand it, our policy is that the definition should be extended to cover refugees. However, as you know, asylum is a reserved matter, so the Parliament does not have competence in that regard, which is why the provision is not in the bill. Having said that, the policy is clear and the Scotland Act 1998 provides mechanisms to deliver that policy, notwithstanding the reservation of the power. Those mechanisms are often used to address this sort of problem. We are working with colleagues in Whitehall to investigate the best option for delivering that policy.
I would like to pursue the question of priority need. Section 1(3) would insert the following words in the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987:
Our intention is to give legislative form to what is in the guidance.
Would the condition apply to somebody who said that they were homeless because the people upstairs were drug users and they felt that their children were vulnerable?
We would expect the local authority to be able to take a view on the extent to which that person was at risk. The amendment to the 1987 act attempts to deal with the risk factor.
Is the point that a young person in that situation would be more at risk than a settled family with children would be?
We visualised less a situation in which a family was living next to a drug user than a situation in which a young person had cut loose and was squatting in flats or whatever in company that would put them at a greater risk than they would be in if they were accepted as homeless and were housed.
I have talked to people who, in effect, have become homeless because the drug-related activity upstairs from them made them fearful that their children would become involved. Would such people be included in the condition that the bill would insert in the 1987 act?
If the local authority considered their fears to have grounds.
The definition of priority need would have to come after the homelessness assessment. The question of vulnerability would be considered only after the person was assessed as homeless. A family with children would be considered to have a priority need for accommodation anyway, because of the fact that children were involved.
Will you clarify how the bill will affect local authorities' current practice, which is that only one offer of accommodation need be made to a homeless person? A lot of homeless people who are offered accommodation in places in which many people have drink or drug problems do not think that it would be appropriate for them to accept that kind of property. What will their position be?
That issue is not addressed specifically in the bill, but it is addressed in the task force's report. The task force recommended that homeless people should be treated in the same way as other people who receive offers of accommodation. Generally, that should involve more than one offer of accommodation. The task force's recommendation has been written into the guidance that was issued to local authorities on the development of their strategies. Communities Scotland will monitor the delivery of those strategies, particularly the number of offers of accommodation.
The bill will remove the duty on local authorities to investigate whether someone has made themselves homeless intentionally and replace it with a right to investigate such matters and the discretion to do so. What options have you considered to ensure the consistent use of that discretion across local authority areas?
All local authorities will have the discretion, which will inevitably lead to it being used in different ways. The important point is whether the discretion is used fairly and whether the outcomes for the people who apply are fair. An assessment of the discretion's use will be included in Communities Scotland's assessment of the delivery of the strategies. Communities Scotland will examine the extent to which local authorities investigate intentionality and what the outcomes are. That study will look across local authorities and at individual local authorities to see the use that is made of the discretionary power. However, because the power is discretionary, it is inevitable that local authorities will use it differently.
The discretionary nature of the power means that there must be an acceptance that local authorities will generally use the power in the same way. There should be clear guidance about when the discretion is to be used.
The declaration of how local authorities will use the power will be included in the strategies that they are developing.
The intentionality provisions will result in local authorities having a continuous duty to ensure that individuals do not fall out of the system and that they continue to receive temporary accommodation and support. Does the Executive envisage circumstances in which a local authority will no longer be responsible for offering someone accommodation? If so, do you have any examples of that? Is it possible that, despite a local authority's best intentions to offer short-term accommodation, some people might not take up that offer or the offer of support services that the local authority has gone out of its way to provide? In such situations, will the local authority still be required to accommodate the person? If not, should the bill be amended to recognise the difficulties that some local authorities might face?
In those circumstances, the duty to accommodate will end only if the individual finds their own accommodation and chooses not to accept the accommodation that the local authority offers. The task force's starting point is that although a small group of people has been identified as intentionally homeless, before that assessment those people were identified as being in priority need and therefore vulnerable. Irrespective of the intentionality finding, those people remain in the vulnerable category.
I accept that the situation will not be easy. One hopes that, in most cases, a local authority could support an individual or family to address some of their chaotic behaviour. People who have chaotic lifestyles sometimes do not accept the support and advice that are available or the assistance that is being offered to sustain a tenancy. If that is the case, is it fair that local authorities should face the additional burden of striving constantly to offer such services? I hope that such circumstances are unusual, but at such times, it might need to be acknowledged that a local authority had done all that it could do.
It is recognised that if the support that a local authority offers is not accepted, at least accommodation of some form should be available—not a short tenancy, but accommodation that we have linked to section 7 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, which gives local authorities a wide range of possible forms of accommodation for such individuals.
As local authorities will be required to provide support services to individuals, what options have been considered for informing individuals of their responsibilities and rights under the bill?
We can provide such guidance, but we have not thought about its detail. When the provision has commenced, it will be important that local authorities, individuals and RSLs are clear about what will be available. Local authorities will be responsible for providing advice and assistance to individuals. That guidance can be developed.
Could the committee be involved in developing that guidance, as with the guidance on the housing legislation? The committee feels that it could make an input.
We expect to develop guidance in consultation with the committee.
The supporting people initiative is the new integrated policy that will be the be-all and end-all. How will it affect local authorities' ability to make support services available? What plans does the Executive have for local authorities regarding the support levels that they can expect so that they can plan to build on the services that they will have to provide? You said that the guidance would develop. Will you give more detail about that?
Are you asking about the information that we will give to local authorities?
Yes.
Local authorities are heavily engaged in developing their supporting people strategies. At the risk of referring to too many strategies—
Overstrategised.
Yes. Supporting people strategies will be linked closely to local housing strategies. When support that is provided in the context of the intentionally homeless sections falls within eligible support for supporting people, it may be funded through supporting people, but if it falls outwith that, it may be funded from other sources or by other providers. As local authorities develop their homelessness strategies, we will expect them to consider specifically their expected support requirements when they examine the extent of intentional homelessness in their areas.
I am cognisant of your earlier comments, but what options have been considered for the type of temporary accommodation that should be on offer to an individual who falls short of meeting the terms for a short Scottish secure tenancy?
We asked specifically in the consultation document whether the type of tenancy should be defined in the legislation. The greatest proportion of responses said that it should not be so defined and that the situation in each case would be so individual that it should be for the local authority to consider individually the appropriate accommodation. However, we recognised the need for minimum standards, which is why we linked the provision of accommodation to section 7 of the 2001 act. That will set out the minimum standards and arrangements for occupancy agreements, for example, for such accommodation.
The task force recommended the suspension of the local connection criteria, and the bill appears to modify those criteria to try to meet the task force's aims. Are there any legal reasons for that approach being adopted in the bill?
I will give a policy reason and Murray Sinclair may want to add something. From a policy perspective, it was thought to be the way of achieving the greatest flexibility. It will allow ministers to make relatively quick modifications, individually or more generally, in response to problems that are identified by the local authority as a result of the suspension.
That is right. The policy intention was to take as wide a power as possible to give sufficient flexibility, and we have tried as a matter of law to provide that wide power and enable the policy, as it develops over time, to be achieved.
You talk about greater flexibility, but do not local authorities already have the power on local connection points and does not the change diminish the local authorities' autonomy by giving control to the Scottish Parliament?
The policy starting point was that, generally speaking, homeless people are more likely to be successfully resettled if they are able to live where they choose to live. They tend to choose to live in their local area, and it is only in unusual circumstances or for specific reasons that they choose to live elsewhere. The starting point was the task force's recommendation that the local connection power should not exist. Therefore, we wanted to remove it from current use but to be able to replace it if specific problems arose that had not been identified initially.
The task force had some concerns that the suspension of the local connection power may result in an
One of the difficulties that the task force faced was the fact that there is little evidence of what is happening at the moment. Because local connection exists, it acts as a damper to our having any statistics to show what is going to happen. The task force's wish was to have it removed, but it could not say for certain what would happen if it were to be removed.
Does the Executive intend to fund local authorities fully to address the additional staffing and training needs that may arise through the implementation of the bill?
Funding is made available through the funding review to implement the recommendations of the homelessness task force, but I do not think that we have assessed whether that work will be fully funded. We need to know, from the local authority assessments and strategies, what work must be done to address homelessness locally.
If significant financial burdens are placed on local authorities, the only way in which the authorities will be able to fund them—unless the Executive funds them fully—is by cutting services in other areas. That issue has caused some friction between the Executive and local authorities in recent years. Would not the Executive wish to make a commitment to funding that work fully, to ensure that the bill is implemented smoothly? If the Executive does not do that, local authorities, although they might want to implement the bill, may need to use the resources in other areas to fulfil their statutory obligations.
That is not a commitment that I can give. However, the expectation is not only that certain matters will require further funding, but that there will be improvements in the delivery of some services, which will lead to efficiency savings. We will see how the package comes together as a whole.
I want to talk a wee bit about what happens just now with regard to repossessions and evictions and how you see those things happening after the bill is implemented. Everybody recognises that eviction should be the last resort. The homelessness task force recognised that, as did the committee. However, although guidance exists, its spirit is sometimes breached and the threat of eviction is used to control rent arrears, for example. Will any mechanism be put in place—perhaps through the homelessness strategies and monitored by Communities Scotland—to clamp down on such bad practice, so that eviction and the threat of eviction are truly a last resort?
I am sorry for the delay in answering—20 meetings of the homelessness task force covered a lot of ground and I am thinking through its response.
I am concerned not so much about evicting people for rent arrears—the new legislation on housing benefits is good in that respect—but about the automatic issuing of eviction notices as a way of controlling rent arrears. That takes no account of the fact that the rent arrears problem may result from an internal housing benefit problem in the council. Three months down the line, that problem may trigger a notice to quit. I am concerned about good practice. Councils should not use the threat of eviction when it is unlikely that they would be granted an eviction order if it came to it, as such orders would amount to harassment. Local authorities and housing association landlords are guilty of doing that.
A more general category of recommendation is that local authorities should review their rent arrears and anti-social behaviour policies to ensure that those policies do not lead to avoidable or preventable homelessness. As part of the development of the strategy, they should involve landlords in other sectors in those reviews.
I assume that Communities Scotland will have that kind of policy.
Yes. It is followed through into the guidance for the strategies and the assessment of those strategies.
Partners in the private sector, including mortgage lenders, have said that they are not convinced that things will go smoothly after the bill is passed. The bill includes a requirement for lenders to notify local authorities if they are going to repossess a home. What consultation has been conducted with those private partners and have their concerns about the different working practices of local authorities been taken on board so that, as Karen Whitefield said, national guidance can be drawn up on how those things should proceed?
As part of the consultation exercise, we wrote to the five bodies that we thought would be particularly interested in the recommendations. We have received responses from the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Scottish Landowners Federation. The member is right, in that those bodies highlighted the fact that, if the notification procedures are to work, they need to be processed and placed to ensure that local authorities can respond.
Does the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities have input into the consultation on behalf of the local authorities?
On the notification side?
No. On the general guidance about how such things should be dealt with.
Yes. We will certainly involve COSLA, as a member of the monitoring group and through the normal consultation methods.
I have one further follow-up question about hidden homelessness. Given that we are dealing with the regime as it is, with all the implications that that brings, does the Executive have a feel for what may come out of the woodwork—if I could put it that way—in respect of the new demands that the bill will put on public authorities and the financial impact of those demands?
It is difficult to have a clear feel for that. I am sorry that my answer is always that the assessments will give us a lot of information, but that is what we believe. Local authorities have been working for 18 months to investigate homelessness in their areas. We hope that a lot of valuable information will result from that process.
Once the local strategies are in place, will you be able to get a better handle on the matter and to say that a certain amount of facilities of this or that kind will be needed across the country? Will you then be able to put everything together to find out what we need to fill the gaps and what the cost will be?
Yes. The introduction of local strategies will certainly give us such a picture. However, I do not want to suggest that that is the only way in which that will happen. We have also improved considerably the statistical collection arrangements, which were previously rather rigid and rather late in reporting. We have improved both the timing of the statistical collection and the breakdown of information that it provides on the households that apply and what their concerns are.
We have reached the end of our questions. I thank the witnesses for their attendance. Committee members will agree that the evidence was very useful. If, on reflection, the witnesses feel that they want to expand on any points or to raise other issues, we would appreciate it if they would let us know in writing.
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