Fairer Scotland action plan: progress report 2020

Housing

The quality of our housing is one of the most important factors in determining our quality of life and ensuring everyone has access to a safe, warm and affordable place to call home is at the heart of our ambition for a Fairer Scotland.

The coronavirus crisis has reiterated the fundamental importance of safe and good quality housing for all. That means continuing our programme of housebuilding, and ensuring both new and existing homes are energy efficient and high quality, creating jobs as part of our investment in construction and retro‑fitting.

We were on target to reach our ambitious target to deliver 50,000 affordable homes – with 35,000 for social rent backed by £3.5 million investment this parliament. The lockdown of course disrupted this work, but homes will be completed as quickly as it is safe to do so. We are proud of our record of delivering 95,000 affordable homes since 2007.

This year we have allocated more than £198 million to our domestic and non-domestic energy efficiency programmes. By the end of 2021, we will have allocated over £1 billion since 2009 to tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency. We will publish the final Fuel Poverty Strategy in 2021 with a target date of 2040 to tackle the root causes of fuel poverty.

We also recently announced a further £16 million to improve the energy efficiency of people's homes to make them warmer and cheaper to heat, taking our total grant funding this year to support fuel poor households to £97 million.

Over the next Parliament we will invest nearly £1.6 billion in transforming our buildings to ensure that emissions from heating are eliminated by 2040 to remove poor energy efficiency as a driver of fuel poverty. The deal uplifts Heat and Energy efficiency spend from £112 million in 2019-20 to £398 million per annum in 2025‑26.

We recognise that some groups are at higher risk of homelessness than others and will continue to implement the homelessness prevention pathways so that people leaving prison, care leavers and victims of domestic abuse have positive housing pathways that support them to keep a settled home and achieve positive outcomes in their lives.

On 8 October 2020, we published a revised Ending Homelessness Together action plan^[8]. It outlines how national government, local government and third sector partners will work together on our shared ambition to end homelessness. It has been updated to reflect actions needed in response to the global coronavirus pandemic and is informed by people who have experience of homelessness and rough sleeping and by the insights of those who work in homelessness services.

As part of our Winter Plan, we announced an extra £5.14 million for homelessness purposes. £5 million of this will go to local authorities to support their work on Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans which aims to move people through temporary accommodation into settled accommodation. Of this £140,000 will be used to support homeless people directly.

Updates on the recommendations and actions listed above can be found in the Tackling Child Poverty Progress Report.

Support for tenants

During the COVID-19 pandemic we have taken additional steps to increase awareness of housing rights and sign post tenants to further sources of housing advice and assistance including:

• three social media campaigns highlighting tenancy rights and the financial support available;
• publication of a private rented sector tenant resource in collaboration between Public Health Scotland, Citizens Advice Scotland and Shelter Scotland which provides a comprehensive guide to support and advice for those living in the private rented sector during the pandemic, and
• the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning wrote to all private rented and social housing tenants in Scotland, providing information on their rights and the support available to them.

Under the Scottish Social Housing Charter, social landlords must ensure that people looking for housing find it easy to apply for the widest choice of social housing available and get the information they need on how the landlord allocates homes and on their prospects of being housed. They also need to ensure that people looking for housing get information that helps them make informed choices and decisions about the range of housing options available to them. These apply to all people looking for housing including young people. We will be reviewing the Charter during 2021 to ensure these outcomes are fit for purpose.

Council Tax

The Council Tax Reduction Scheme (CTR) means nobody has to endure financial difficulties because they have lost the ability to pay their council tax, including those impacted by COVID-19. We have allocated £25 million to councils to help them meet the increased costs of the CTR scheme, in addition to the £351 million we already provide for the scheme.

We are committed to making local taxation more progressive, whilst improving the financial accountability of local government. During the course of the Budget 2019‑20 process, we committed to implement a package of local tax reforms that would deliver the most significant empowerment of local authorities since devolution.

We were on track to implement the measures in this package but the COVID-19 pandemic response meant work to deliver these commitments had to be paused.