Homelessness Prevention Task And Finish Group: Scottish Government response

Our response

The key messages coming out of the group’s report are that the measures could be transformative; that investment in prevention saves lives and money; and that, to be successful, the duties need to be backed by adequate resourcing and support.

The Scottish Government fully supports these messages. The legislation introduced to the Scottish Parliament which includes the prevention of homelessness duties will be accompanied by a financial memorandum on estimates of associated costs and potential savings.

The group’s final report highlights 5 priority areas and 11 short term actions in its executive summary. This response deals with each of these actions in turn, while recognising that the report contains a more detailed commentary that will inform work to develop legislation, guidance and training in the coming years.

Priority short term actions

Workforce training and support proposals

1. Creating Homelessness Prevention Strategic Lead and Homelessness Prevention Lead roles in all public bodies to whom the new duties apply.
2. Creating a national lead on training around the duties, to both support new ways of working across sectors, as well as continuing to ensure the ongoing development of knowledge and understanding in relevant sectors.

Our response to priority actions on workforce training and support

The report is clear the message that preventing homelessness is ‘everybody’s business’ needs to be at the centre of all communications about the duties. The Scottish Government agrees with this and has progressed work to develop the  duties guided by the key principles which informed the recommendations of the Prevention Review Group, including that preventing homelessness should be a shared public responsibility.

The Scottish Government is clear that training will be crucial to the delivery of the duties. Specified public bodies will be expected to ask about someone’s housing situation and take actions within existing powers to assist them in order to prevent a housing crisis. Referrals to local authorities (who will continue to have the legal responsibility to house people who are homeless) will also be an option where that is deemed to be necessary. This new legislative role for public bodies will help form the basis for wider co-operation and planning between partners to help prevent homelessness.

The Scottish Government:

• will continue to work closely with partners and stakeholders to ensure we get the legislation and guidance right.
• knows that important work to prevent homelessness is already happening in Scotland and will work with practitioners to learn the lessons from that.
• acknowledges the duties will only be successful if we work together in partnership across areas such as housing, health and justice to meet our objectives of shared public responsibility and earlier intervention to prevent homelessness.
• strongly encourages local authorities to make full use of homelessness prevention funding and start working with public bodies now to prevent homelessness wherever possible in anticipation of the new legislation.
• believes that local authorities, public bodies and their partners are best placed to decide on the structure of prevention leads and teams in local areas to deliver the duties.
• commits to working closely with partners to identify what will be required across different sectors and services to ensure appropriate training for effective delivery, building on existing practice and taking account of the need for strategic coordination.

Legislation proposals

3. Renaming the Housing Bill to reflect the broad scope of the provision, for example the ‘Early Intervention and Housing Sustainability Bill’.
4. Providing clarity as soon as possible on which public bodies the new duties will apply to, so that individuals and organisations working in those sectors can engage with the draft legislation.
5. Clarifying what is meant by ‘Ask’ and ‘Act,’ and introduce these as two separate duties.
6. Carrying out in-depth consultation with frontline workers, managers and strategic leads in public bodies to ensure the ‘Ask’ and ‘Act’ duties are designed in a way that is appropriate for those sectors.

Our response to priority actions on legislation

The report highlights the need for clarity on the specified public bodies to be subject to the legislation and for clarity on the operation of Ask and Act. The Scottish Government has already commenced work on these aspects of the legislation.

The Scottish Government:

• will list the relevant bodies to whom the duties apply in primary legislation, and stakeholders will be able to see that legislation once published. We will also ensure that this list can be updated in the future as required.
• will introduce the Ask and Act requirements as separate duties and with the intention that these go further than (but may include where appropriate) a duty to refer to local authorities. We are still progressing the legislation and currently working through important issues around what will be set out in the legislation and what will be operational aspects to be set out in guidance.
• will include a duty on relevant bodies to cooperate within their own powers and ensure that this can be updated in the future as required.
• recognises that the duties on relevant bodies are breaking new ground and that this progressive approach requires clarity on the operational aspects and expectations in guidance.
• intends that the reasonable steps that should be taken by local authorities to prevent homelessness are clarified and included in secondary legislation.
• notes that the naming of the bill, which will include the duties, will be set out once the full content of the bill is known. This is part of the legislative drafting process.
• will work across Government to ensure the objectives of the duties are aligned with other planned legislation which has been or is still to be introduced to the Scottish Parliament.

Funding proposals

7. Carrying out a full financial assessment to ensure that all public bodies affected by the new duties have the budget to fulfil their duties, and making all additional funding required available to support the new duties.

Our response to priority actions on funding

The group’s report highlights the importance of adequate funding to make the duties work, recommending this is more than the three years’ funding allocated to prevention duties in England, and asks for more clarity on the resource implications for public bodies.

The Scottish Government:

• recognises that appropriate resourcing will be essential to successful delivery of the duties. Within the current economic and fiscal circumstances, we will need to carefully balance the provision of resource to support the duties with other priorities whilst ensuring value for public investment.
• shares the ambition that the successful prevention of homelessness will lead to better outcomes and less spend on crisis responses.
• will work with our partners and stakeholders  to identify the detail of this and will include an assessment of resource implications when we introduce the duties to the Scottish Parliament.

Service changes and support proposals

8. Conducting system reviews now, in anticipation of the new duties, to identify changes to commissioned services and the formation of collaborative networks. These reviews should be led by people with experience of homelessness.
9. Commissioning a piece of work looking at data sharing across public bodies, with a view to enabling data relating to individuals at risk of homelessness to be shared across public services, supported by informed consent.

Our response to priority actions on service changes and support

The group’s report emphasised the importance of co-design of local services whose objectives or priorities will change as a result of duties, including frontline workers and people with lived experience of homelessness.

The report also stresses the points of data sharing and the lawful basis for using information. This has already been the subject of discussion between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Information Commissioner’s Office, and the approach taken to the duties will take account of that. On the wider collection of data, the report suggests that a new monitoring framework to complement existing statistics be established, a new set of indicators be developed for prevention and that we ensure specific groups at threat of homelessness are covered in data collections.

The Scottish Government:

• is continuing to engage with the Information Commissioner’s Office as appropriate on issues of data collection and using information.
• is working across Government and with partners to identify what data requirements would arise from the implementation of duties, aligning with a wider review of homelessness data collection which is intended to conclude in 2027.
• will consider the implications of the final report of the Measuring Progress Task and Finish group, set up to consider how to better demonstrate and report on the progress Scotland is making towards preventing and ending homelessness, published in December 2023 and its specific recommendation for data to be developed for the new prevention duties in conjunction with a review of PREVENT1.
• will encourage partners to consider the role the duties can play in helping drive the focus, co-design and planning of local services to prevent homelessness.

Monitoring and oversight proposals

10. Once there is clarity on the new homelessness prevention duties, the Scottish Housing Regulator should update its regulatory framework, clearly setting out how it will assess local authority and landlord compliance.
11. Establishing an oversight project board with various workstreams to oversee implementation of the duties (legislation, service restructure and transition to the new model, development of statutory guidance etc.).

Our response to priority actions on monitoring and oversight

The group’s report recommends an oversight project board is put in place to oversee implementation of the duties, that there is co-operation between regulators and that an advice team on the duties is established. Since publication of the final report, the Scottish Government has established a Ministerial Oversight on Homelessness recognising the importance of joint working across various ministerial portfolios, which can contribute to the joining up of policy to better inform the introduction and implementation of the duties.

The Scottish Government:

• has established a cross policy Ministerial Oversight Group on Homelessness, which met for the first time in September 2023 and heard from the co-chairs of the Homelessness Prevention Task and Finish Group.
• will include in guidance the role that can be played in preventing homelessness by bodies not directly covered by the duties but who have legal responsibilities in areas such as equality, human rights e.g., DWP, Home Office.
• will continue to work with the Scottish Housing Regulator and other regulators of public bodies, through the Strategic Scrutiny Group, to identify their role in reporting on the implementation of the duties.

Other longer term recommendations

The priority actions listed above were accompanied by a series of other recommendations in areas such as:

• language and stigma
• women and children experiencing domestic abuse
• young people
• empowerment through digital tools
• home as part of health and wellbeing needs
• the need to build, acquire and update housing
• the definitions of affordable and social housing
• institutions
• education
• housing support.

The Scottish Government:

• recognises the stigma and misunderstandings that can still exist about the experience of homelessness, including the causes and meaning of homelessness or the threat of homelessness, and commits to addressing these issues through our delivery of policy, legislation and guidance in relation to the duties and more widely.
• recognises the points made on the importance of language in addressing the issue of homelessness and commits to working with stakeholders to get this right in legislation, guidance, policy documents and training for services.
• recognises that men and women experience homelessness differently with domestic abuse being one of the main reasons women apply for homelessness assistance. As part of the measures to prevent homelessness we will include a requirement for social landlords to develop and implement a Domestic Abuse Housing Policy which outlines how they will support their tenants experiencing domestic abuse.
• will work to ensure the duties strengthen and complement existing requirements to support children and young people and commits to introducing specific guidance in this area.
• will work with partners to promote an enhanced role for health bodies in preventing homelessness and work with bodies including Healthcare Improvement Scotland to identify how and where health services may be affected by the duties.
• is investing at least £60 million in 2023-24 in a national acquisition plan so local authorities and registered social landlords can purchase properties for use as high quality, affordable, permanent homes.
• is supporting local authorities with their local housing stock management activity to maximise the use of existing housing stock.
• will include the issue of affordability, along with issues of suitability and stability of housing, in guidance to assist with identifying appropriate housing options as part of the new duties.
• will ensure that the duties are aligned to and complement the objectives of current legislation and policy with regards to ‘institutions’ e.g. Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Act 2023, SHORE (Sustainable Housing on Release for Everyone) standards.
• will aim to ensure the roles of people working within education settings are subject to appropriate guidance to support their work as it relates to the duties.
• will clarify in guidance the links between the duties and the existing housing support duty, the provision of wider housing support and the potential role of personal housing plans, with the intention that the provision of housing support becomes an integral part of responses to preventing homelessness where this need is identified.