Ending homelessness together: annual report to the Scottish Parliament, November 2024

Progress against actions to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place

6. Respond to the recommendations of the task and finish group on homelessness prevention

7. Increase focus on tenancy sustainment and establish mechanisms to avoid evictions into homelessness

8. Push the UK Government to reverse its welfare reforms that put people at risk of homelessness

9. Consider more streamlined application processes for discretionary housing payments and use information sharing powers to target people who are most in need of discretionary housing payments

10. Improve affordability in the private rented sector

11. Support the First-tier Tribunal to improve transparency around outcomes for tenants through better use of data

12. Implement and review prevention pathways for groups at particular risk, including for women experiencing domestic abuse

• The Scottish Government published its response to the report of the task and finish group on homelessness prevention in December 2023. The group’s recommendations are informing our approach to the delivery and implementation of the new homelessness prevention duties.
• The Scottish Government’s Housing (Scotland) Bill was introduced on 26 March 2024 and is at stage 1 of the process on becoming an act. The bill will strengthen tenants’ rights and introduce an ‘ask and act’ duty on relevant bodies to ask about a person’s housing situation and act to avoid them becoming homeless where possible. It will also reform existing homelessness legislation by requiring local authorities to intervene earlier to support people threatened with homelessness.
• The Scottish Government is making £30.5 million available to local authorities in 2024-25, specifically for their work to prevent homelessness.
• Economic modelling published in February 2024 estimates that the cumulative impact of policies such as the Scottish Child Payment will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty in 2024-25, with relative poverty levels 10 percentage points lower than they would have otherwise been.
• We continue to support councils to deliver housing options, which can help prevent homelessness. Our latest statistics on housing options services in Scotland show that in 2023-24, more than half of households who received housing options advice did not go on to submit a homelessness application, and the number of people remaining in their current home is the highest in the time series at 28 per cent.
• We amended the law in April 2024 to bring the discretionary housing payment scheme under full Scottish Government control, which allows us to make different choices and provide greater support for low-income households.
• In 2024-25, we are making over £90 million available to local authorities to spend on discretionary housing payments (DHPs). DHPs assist households affected by the bedroom tax and the benefit cap and they help renters whose benefits are restricted because of local housing allowance (LHA) rates.
• Scottish ministers have asked UK Government ministers to scrap the bedroom tax and benefit cap and commit to uprating LHA rates annually.
• Through our DHP practitioners’ forum, we are exploring a more streamlined application process for DHPs to ensure greater consistency in DHP claim assessment and decision making.
• The emergency rent cap protected private tenants with an existing tenancy between October 2022 and March 2024. Temporary rent adjudication measures are now in place to limit large increases for tenants.
• The Housing (Scotland) Bill proposes rent control measures that will cap rents between tenancies, with the aim of stabilising private rents in the long term.
• The homelessness statistics 2023-24 show that the number of households making a homelessness application from the private rented sector decreased by 17% in 2023-24.
• The expert group on housing affordability set up by the Scottish Government to develop a shared understanding of housing affordability has concluded its work. It will submit a final report to ministers later in 2024.
• The latest statistical report on the work of the Housing and Property Chamber for the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 was published in October 2024. It includes information on trends in tenant representation and case outcomes.
• We piloted a £500,000 fund to leave in 2023-24 and helped over 500 women with the costs of leaving an abusive relationship. Learning from the pilot will inform our next steps.
• We will implement part 2 of the Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Act 2021 and are developing the necessary secondary legislation and statutory guidance. We are working with the Scottish Court Service to develop changes to court rules to allow for implementation as soon as possible.
• Our new homelessness prevention legislation will require social landlords to develop and implement a domestic abuse housing policy.
• We and our justice and local authority partners have refreshed the Sustainable Housing on Release for Everyone (SHORE) standards to ensure that the housing needs of people leaving prison are handled consistently across Scotland.