Scots councils break homelessness laws 6000 times in a year

The Herald can reveal that only one local authority - Scottish Borders - recorded no breaches in the last full year out of 25 that had reported to the Scottish Government. There are 32 Scottish local authorities.

There has been a 55% rise in breaches in the past year alone with numbers going up from 3865 - a 2119 leap.

Legal failures to offer households temporary accommodation for the homeless have shot up by 226% in the two years from 515 to 1680. Some 80% of the breaches have been in Glasgow.

READ MORE: ScotGov delivers affordable homes 'fatal blow' with £360m budget cut

And breaches of the unsuitable accommodation order - which is legally binding and ensures that people have access to decent living accommodation - have rocketed nearly fivefold over the same period from 730 to 4304.

Councils have a legal obligation to offer temporary accommodation when they assess a person or household as unintentionally homeless.

According to data collected by the Scottish Government of the 25 just Midlothian, Scottish Borders and Stirling recorded no breaches of the unsuitable accommodation order in the latest year.

Scotland's housing regulator has launched a local authorities intervention over what they have declared as a "systemic failure" in dealing with a homelessness crisis in Scotland.

The body which has powers to protect tenants rights has already set engagement plans for two of Scotland's biggest councils, Glasgow City Council and the City of Edinburgh Council which have both registered housing emergencies.

Both councils are to hold meetings with the regulator over the state of their services and are expected to provide assurance of best efforts to provide suitable temporary accommodation for the homeless, in line with their legal duty.

They have been told to make "best efforts" to meet its statutory duty to provide temporary accommodation when it should and to comply with the Unsuitable Accommodation Order.

The body warned ministers in February that there was an "emerging risk of systemic failure" in local authority homelessness services as some councils were finding it "increasingly difficult" to deal with the challenges of providing services for those who are homeless and meet their legal duties.

And it said that tackling the challenges of providing services for those who are homeless and meeting statutory duties may need to be a "principal priority" for the coming period for the Scottish Government, councils and others working to meet the needs of people who are homeless.

The regulator, whose statutory objective is to safeguard and promote the interests of 600,000 tenants who live in homes provided by social landlords, 120,000 property owners and the tens of thousands who experience homelessness, says the risk has become a reality.

Argyll and Bute Council joined Glasgow and Edinburgh in declaring symbolic housing emergencies.

The City of Edinburgh Council has said the only solution lies with the Scottish Government providing "fair and proper funding".

Glasgow City Council has said that there is "general recognition" that extra resources were needed to deal with the problem.

The Scottish Tenants Organisation said that local authorities should be prosecuted for the breaches.

"This major failure to provide emergency accommodation is driving homeless men, women and children to destitution. The failure of policy must not be allowed to continue," the STO said.

In 2019, the then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that breaches of the Unsuitable Accommodation Ordee "should not be tolerated" and said it would consider introducing sanctions on those councils that fail to comply as part of plans to "transform temporary accommodation".

At that point there were just 750 breaches in a year-and-a-half, a fraction of the numbers currently being reported.

A property is deemed unsuitable if it does not meet certain criteria, for example it is not wind and watertight, does not meet minimum safety standards or lacks adequate bedrooms, toilet and personal washing facilities.

Experts say that the order seeks to prevent the long-term use of bed and breakfast accommodation, hotels, hostels and shelters.

Local authorities are in breach when placing a homeless household in accommodation not meeting the requirements of the order for more than seven days.

The Scottish Government has admitted that its data collection on unfit housing breaches should be treated with caution due to what it called "reporting anomalies and inconsistencies associated with differing interpretations of the legislation..."

It comes as new figures showed that the number of people seeking homelessness assistance has risen by nearly 3000 in a year while the numbers sleeping rough has soared in Scotland's housing and homelessness crisis.

New figures show that the numbers seeking help has risen by 7% from 37,248 in the end of September, 2022 to 40,024 last year.

And some 325 more people were sleeping rough the night before seeking help than the previous year. The numbers have risen from 1,336 to 1,661.

There were 9,860 children living in temporary accommodation on September 30, 2023 – an 8% (735) increase from the previous year.

Earlier this month the Glasgow city council said it had been presented with an "impossible challenge" to meet a legal duty to find accommodation for hundreds of homeless refugees who have now been granted asylum but are still to find a home.

The council is dealing with more than 400 refugee households who have been given a positive Home Office decision to stay in the country but have not been found a place to stay.

The city council has been searching for alternative temporary accommodation because of a shortage of hotel rooms and has looked at using vacant nursing and care homes as it seeks to deal with the households who have to leave accommodation provided by housing company Mears to accommodate those who are seeking asylum.

The council made its symbolic housing emergency declaration in the wake of concerns over social unrest following moves to accelerate the clearance of a backlog of asylum claims by the Home Office.

A spokeswoman for Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership said that the reasons for the rise was that the city faces "unprecedented levels of demand for emergency accommodation".

The spokeswoman said: " This is largely driven by the UK Government’s decision to accelerate the asylum decision process, with significant numbers of people travelling to Glasgow from across Scotland but also from Northern Ireland and England.

“We have expanded our use of bed and breakfast in an attempt to meet the current levels of demand for homelessness assistance. We declared a housing emergency due to the pressures on the city in relation to the demand for housing and homelessness services. We continue to engage with the UK and Scottish Governments as we seek assistance to deal with the increased demand.”

Maureen Chalmers, the community wellbeing spokesman for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities added: "I am really concerned about the increasing number of people who are homeless across Scotland. While councils work hard in partnership with the Scottish Government and those in the third sector, our ability to offer support and accommodation is being overtaken by need.

"More affordable housing is required, if we are to avoid more local authorities joining the three who have already declared local housing emergencies."

Earlier this month, the Herald revealed that a Scottish Government bid to help end a housing and homelessness crisis suffered a "scandalous" hit with its annual budget slashed by £360m over the past two years.

Concerns emerged that a key Scottish Government pledge to deliver 110,000 social and affordable homes by 2032 had been delivered a "fatal blow" by the cuts.

The More Homes budget plans, which covers the Scottish Government's affordable housing supply programme is due to take a cumulative hit of over half a billion pounds over two years - based against the 2022/23 allocation of £740.089m.

Worries about how the Scottish Government is tackling the housing crisis have emerged after what housing campaigners say was a "staggering" £188.8m (33%) cut to the budget in the past year alone with the spending plans for 2024/25 set at £375.8m.

The affordable homes plan set out by Nicola Sturgeon in a Programme for Government in 2021 to "build on our investment in housing" had already seen its budget cut by £175.5m in 2023/24 dropping by some 24% in a year.

Housing Minister Paul McLennan said:

“We recognise these are exceptionally challenging times and we are working with local authorities to ensure no one is turned away when they need help.

“We are doing all we can to prevent people becoming homeless and to reduce the use of temporary accommodation. The UK Government failed to inflation-proof its capital budget, and this has resulted in nearly a 10% real terms cut in our UK capital funding between 2023-24 and 2027-28. Despite these cuts, we are providing councils with £30.5 million annually for their work to prevent homelessness and £100 million from our multi-year Ending Homelessness Together fund, in addition to funding through the local government settlement. We will invest £556 million in affordable housing in 2024-25, the majority of which will be for social rent.

“Where the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) identifies non-compliance with the Unsuitable Accommodation Order in a local authority, an engagement plan will be published setting out what the social landlord needs to do and what the SHR will do. The SHR expects the local authority to become compliant on its own given the responsibility to do so lies with the local authority.”