Homelessness in Scotland: update to 30 September 2018

Introduction

This bulletin provides information on Scottish local authority homelessness applications, assessments and outcomes in the period from 1 April to 30 September 2018. It also provides data on the number of households in temporary accommodation, along with the number of households in unsuitable temporary accommodation as defined in the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order 2014^[1].

The purpose of this bi-annual bulletin is to provide a summary of the latest quarterly and six monthly results, and to place these in the context of longer term trends.

Separate annual bulletins, the most recent of which was published on 19 June 2018 and covered the financial year 2017/18, are lengthier publications and provide a more in-depth analysis of the causes of homelessness in Scotland and the characteristics of the households who apply to Scottish Local Authorities for homelessness assistance. The next annual publication for the year 2018/19 is planned to be published in June 2019.

This bi-annual publication also includes information on the Housing Support Services (Homelessness) (Scotland) Regulations 2012. These regulations came into force on 1st June 2013. These regulations place a duty on local authorities to assess the need for housing support for every applicant assessed by the local authority as unintentionally homeless or threatened with homelessness, and who the local authority has reason to believe would benefit from housing support services as prescribed in the regulations. If an assessment of a need for support is made, local authorities must ensure the housing support services are provided (see the section Housing support regulations).

Please note that this bulletin updates previously published figures. There may be delays in some cases being reported to the Scottish Government due to IT issues, quality assurance processes and delayed entry of data. As a result, it is estimated that the headline number of applications may change by as much as 4% (up to around 360 cases for the current quarter for example) between first and subsequent publications (see the section Notes on the Statistics).

Readers may be interested to note that Housing Options (PREVENT1) statistics are also available at http://scotland.gov.uk/homelessstats. These are produced on an annual basis, with the latest publication released on 19 June 2018.