Chamber and committees

The largest part of the ending homelessness together fund goes to local authorities to support the transition to rapid rehousing, including the roll out of housing first. The Scottish Government carries out monitoring to understand from local authorities how that investment is helping them to prioritise settled housing and reduce the use of temporary accommodation. We report to parliament annually on progress against actions in our homelessness strategy – most recently in December 2025 - and this captures the impact of our continued investment in prevention, rapid rehousing and housing first and other initiatives.

The Scottish Government is committed to full and successful implementation of the new homelessness prevention duties. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 includes a provision that Part 5 (homelessness prevention, including ask and act) should be commenced no later than three years from Royal Assent (given November 2025). However, we are clear that relevant bodies named in the Act do not have to wait for the duties to come into force to adopt the ask and act approach.

We provided targeted funding of £4 million this financial year for 15 homelessness prevention pilots, which will run until December 2026. Learning from the pilots will help inform the development of guidance and secondary legislation on ask and act and support smooth implementation of the new duties.

A further £4 million is included in the 2026-27 homelessness budget and we are working with stakeholders to identify the most effective use of this funding.