Chamber and committees

Our Housing Emergency Action Plan, published in September, is the Scottish Government’s ambitious route-map to ensuring that everyone in Scotland gets the support they need when facing homelessness. This financial year, the Scottish Government will invest £808 million in the Affordable Housing Supply Programme, including an £80 million targeted acquisitions fund to support local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures. Our Housing Emergency Action Plan also committed £4.9 billion in a major affordable housing delivery programme to provide future funding certainty, positioning Scotland’s housing market as strong and open for investment. We will ensure action is taken to make the best use of existing housing, bring empty homes back into use, and support those who wish to – and are able to – buy their own home.

Local Authorities have a statutory duty to provide accommodation to anyone assessed as unintentionally homeless, with assessments based on housing need. I understand the pressures on housing and homelessness services local authorities are experiencing, and that in some areas, particularly Glasgow, this has been exacerbated by the Home Office’s streamlined asylum decision making process. I have written to the Secretary of State for the Home Office to ask for appropriate coordination to be put in place in response to the impact asylum policy decisions made at UK level are having on local authorities in Scotland, and for adequate funding to be provided to local authorities to ensure they are able to meet the housing needs of all.