WE write to express our grave concerns about Glasgow City Council’s catalogue of failures regarding its provision of homelessness services.
Too often the council has failed people facing homelessness by failing to provide the temporary accommodation or services they have a legal right to. They get away with impunity time and time again.
Despite involvement from the Scottish Housing Regulator, there has been no improvement. Set against this abject failure, earlier this year the council confounded many of us by deciding to cut £2.6 million of funding for homelessness accommodation in the City.
We the undersigned demand urgent action from the council and ask for a complete overhaul of its homelessness strategy and for a new plan to guarantee temporary accommodation for every person that needs it. Without meaningful change, hundreds of very vulnerable people will continue to be failed by Scotland’s largest local authority.
This is simply not good enough in 21st century Scotland. We say “enough is enough”. People experiencing homelessness are being forced onto the streets; officials are unable or unwilling to tackle the problem, and the numbers are getting worse not better, despite the best efforts of third-sector partners across the city.
There needs to be intervention at the highest level in order to guarantee that homeless people’s rights are met and that they get the level of service they deserve.
Glasgow City Council – you need to stop breaking the law and get your house in order.
Graeme Brown, Director, Shelter Scotland; Maureen Smith, Castlemilk Law Centre; Ewan Aitken, Chief Executive, Cyrenians;
Gavin Yates, Chief Executive Officer , Homeless Action Scotland; Dr Marsha Scott, Chief Executive Scottish Women’s Aid.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel