Homelessness in Scotland: Equalities Breakdown 2019 to 2020

Notes

A complete set of tables with breakdowns are available as Excel workbooks and can be downloaded at:

https://www.gov.scot/collections/homelessness-statistics/

The statistics included in this publication are based on administrative data collected by local authorities in the course of carrying out their homelessness activities. This data is collected from local authorities and quality assured by the Scottish Government on a quarterly basis. Details about the data we collect, our quality assurance process, and how we engage with users to improve our statistics are outlined in our quality assurance statement.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/data-protection-impact-assessment-and-quality-assurance-statment-for-hl1-hl2-hl3-and-prevent1-data-collections/

Characteristic information

Information on the characteristics of the main applicant / household are gathered and recorded as part of the application stage of a homelessness case. This information is linked to the temporary accommodation placements associated with that household to enable reporting by characteristic for temporary accommodation. To note, it is not possible to do the same for the aggregate snapshot temporary accommodation data.

Population comparison data

Comparative data for the the proportion of male adults in the Scottish population was taken from 2019 mid-year population estimates produced by National Records of Scotland.

Data for household types was taken from the Scottish Household Survey 2019.

Data for ethnicity was taken from the Scottish Surveys Core Questions 2018.

Known data quality issues

Not all temporary accommodation placements have an associated homelessness application, however, this accounts for a very small proportion only (1%).

There are a small number temporary accommodation cases on the Scottish Government temporary accommodation placement database that are recorded as open but are linked to homelessness applications that we know to be closed. This occurs when a local authority fails to provide an update for these cases after the placement is closed. In these cases we have taken the approach of using the close date of the homeless application as the exit date of the temporary accommodation placement. This may have the impact of inflating the length of time these households are recorded as using temporary accommodation.