Housing Support Duty to Homeless Households - guidance for local authorities

Foreword to Guidance

The prevention of homelessness is one of the foremost challenges currently facing local authorities and their partners. Councils are well aware of the costs which can result from failing to support homeless households and of the value of effective preventative measures.

Significant progress has been made in this area in recent years, but there is still a way to go. That is why councils responded positively to the new duty to assess needs and support homeless and potentially homeless households where appropriate, and have played a leading role in the preparation of this non statutory guidance to augment the Regulations introduced in June 2013.

Having been designed by practitioners, the guidance is intended very much as a support to implementation. We hope the guidance will be helpful in assisting compliance with the duty, but have also built in a review process to allow the incorporation of improvements and good practice examples over time.

I am grateful to all who participated in the working group to prepare the guidance and to Scottish Government colleagues for providing drafting and secretarial support to the group.

Jim Hayton, Chair of Housing Support Guidance Working Group

Policy Manager, ALACHO
(Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers)