Ending homelessness together: annual report 2023

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

The best way to end homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place. The Scottish Government’s programme for government 2023 to 2024 included plans to introduce new homelessness prevention legislation during the 2023 to 2024 parliamentary year.

A task and finish group of the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group, co-chaired by Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, and Ewan Aitken, chief executive officer of Cyrenians, has completed its consideration of what groundwork is needed to ensure successful implementation of Scotland’s homelessness prevention legislation. Crisis and Cyrenians organised three stakeholder engagement sessions involving 126 frontline workers to raise awareness of the proposed duties; to share good practice; and to gather feedback from frontline workers on what the ask and act duties might look like. The report of the task and finish group was published in August 2023. The Scottish Government will consider and respond to the recommendations of the task and finish group on homelessness prevention.

• This parliamentary year, the Scottish Government will introduce a housing bill that will create new tenants’ rights and new duties aimed at the prevention of homelessness.
• The Scottish Government has welcomed the task and finish group’s report and will respond to the recommendations by the end of the year.
• The Scottish Government makes £30.5 million available annually to local authorities for their work to prevent homelessness.

The Scottish Government’s programme for government 2023 to 2024 maintains a strong focus on tenancy sustainment alongside measures to protect tenants’ rights and avoid evictions into homelessness.

• Regulations to extend the emergency rent cap in the private rented sector and additional eviction protections in the private and social rented sectors were approved by parliament in September 2023. These measures will remain in place until 31 March 2024 at the latest.
• We have tripled our fuel insecurity fund to £30 million in 2023-24 to help households at risk of self-disconnection or self-rationing of energy supply.
• The Scottish Government’s £10 million tenant grant fund was in operation from September 2021 to June 2023. A final monitoring report was published in May 2023, setting out how many tenants have been helped to deal with rent arrears. It showed that local authorities made 6,621 payments totalling over £8.8 million. We have agreed that local authorities can use the remaining funds to support other tenancy sustainment initiatives.
• Thanks to the Scottish Government’s Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act, which came into force in October 2022, private sector landlords must carry out pre-action protocols before seeking to evict tenants on rent arrears grounds. This measure aims to help landlords and tenants work together to sustain tenancies.

The Scottish Government recognises that poverty and inequality are the most significant drivers and predictors of homelessness. Social security benefits must help households to avoid homelessness where possible. While many of the important policy levers rest with the UK Government, the Scottish Government is committed to using the powers it has to tackle poverty and inequality. We support cash-first approaches and are investing significantly in discretionary housing payments (DHPs) to help households struggling with their housing costs. We will continue to push the UK Government to reverse its welfare reforms that put people at risk of homelessness.

• In 2023-24, we are making more than £83 million available to local authorities to spend on DHPs. We use DHPs to mitigate the impacts of the bedroom tax and the benefit cap and to help those whose benefits are restricted because of local housing allowance rates.
• The UK Government has frozen local housing allowance rates since April 2020, in spite of rising rents and living costs. Scottish ministers continue to exert pressure on UK ministers by highlighting the problems caused by the freeze for private renters on low incomes.
• Since 1 January 2023, local authorities have been mitigating the benefit cap as fully as possible. This measure particularly helps households with children[4] as 98 per cent of all households hit by the benefit cap are families and 72 per cent are lone parent families. The Scottish Government is making £6.2 million available in 2023-24 for benefit cap mitigation.

We are working collaboratively with our local authority partners to deliver more streamlined application processes for discretionary housing payments. We also want to use information sharing powers to target people who are most in need of discretionary housing payments.

• A DHP practitioners’ forum for local authority officers has been established to promote the sharing and adoption of good practice. The intention is that this will lead to greater consistency in DHP claim assessment and decision making.
• Initial meetings have dealt with the practicalities of implementing the new benefit cap mitigation policy. Local authorities report that the opportunity to discuss how to resolve common problems has been very useful.
• Later meetings will consider how data supplied by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can be used more effectively and if additional data is needed.
• In light of the different approach taken in Scotland to mitigate the impacts of the bedroom tax and benefit cap, the Scottish Government plans to develop a Scottish DHP guidance manual in the year ahead to replace the DWP guidance manual.

The Scottish Government has made progress with work to improve affordability in the private rented sector.

• The Scottish Government brought forward emergency measures to protect tenants during the cost of living crisis. The Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 introduced a temporary, variable rent cap and a temporary moratorium on enforcement of eviction orders, along with increased damages for unlawful evictions.
• The measures came into force on 28 October 2022, initially for a period of six months. In January 2023, regulations were laid to vary[5] and extend the measures for a further six months.
• Since April 2023, in-tenancy rent increases have been capped at 3 per cent (private landlords can apply for a higher rent increase of up to 6 per cent to cover increases in prescribed property costs, where this can be evidenced).
• In June 2023, further regulations were laid before the Scottish Parliament to extend the Act until 31 March 2024 at the latest. This final extension was approved by the Scottish Parliament in September 2023.
• The Scottish Government’s programme for government 2023 to 2024 confirmed our intention to introduce a housing bill to create powers for the introduction of longer-term rent controls. The bill will also create new tenants’ rights and introduce new duties aimed at the prevention of homelessness.
• The expert group set up by the Scottish Government to develop a shared understanding of housing affordability for Scotland has met three times. It is due to make recommendations to ministers in 2024.
• To inform the group’s work and incorporate lived experience perspectives, the Scottish Government commissioned social research agency The Lines Between to bring together focus groups of tenants in the social and private rented sectors. The researchers explored what people understand by the term affordable housing; what constitutes a decent standard of living; and at what point housing costs become unaffordable.

We said we would support the First-Tier Tribunal to improve transparency around outcomes for tenants through better use of data. The First-Tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber) deals with problems in private sector housing. It is designed to improve access to justice for tenants and landlords in the private rented sector. In addition to the annual report published by the President of Scottish Tribunals, the Housing and Property Chamber now provides a more detailed statistical report.

• The second statistical report on the work of the Chamber for the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 was published in July 2023. It includes information on trends in tenant representation and case outcomes and possible explanations for those trends.

Work continues to implement and review prevention pathways for groups at particular risk of homelessness. We are prioritising work to improve outcomes for women experiencing domestic abuse and to support people leaving prison.

• The response offered by public services to people facing severe and multiple disadvantage is not always well-coordinated or effective. To help address this, Scotland’s housing minister has convened a ministerial oversight group on homelessness. It brings together ministers from across the Scottish Government – with responsibility for drug and alcohol policy, mental wellbeing, refugees and asylum seekers, veterans and care experienced young people – to identify opportunities for better joined up and cross-portfolio thinking on preventing and ending homelessness.
• The Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Act 2021 received royal assent in May 2021. The provisions in the Act are intended to reduce the risk of women becoming homeless in order to escape their abuser. Part 1 of the Act will, when in force, enable the police and the courts to ban suspected abusers from re-entering the home for a period of time. Part 2 of the Act will help protect women by giving social landlords the ability to apply to the court for an order which will have the effect of allowing the landlord to transfer a tenancy to the victim-survivor. The Scottish Government is developing the necessary secondary legislation and guidance and is working with the Scottish Court Service to develop changes to court rules for Part 2, which is expected to come into force early in 2024.
• In our development of the prevention of homelessness duties, we will make it a legal requirement for social landlords to develop and implement a domestic abuse housing policy.
• In response to a recommendation in ‘Improving housing outcomes for women and children experiencing domestic abuse’, we will pilot a ‘fund to leave’ to help women with the costs of leaving an abusive relationship.
• In partnership with the Scottish Prison Service and officials in the Scottish Government’s justice directorate, we continue to review the implementation of the Sustainable Housing on Release for Everyone (SHORE) Standards to ensure that the housing needs of people leaving prison are handled consistently across Scotland.