Category: News

In a Ministerial statement on drugs policy to the Scottish Parliament at the end of January the First Minister announced additional funding over the next five years to address drug-related deaths in Scotland.

The funding consists of an extra £5 million that will be delivered in what remains of this financial year, to be deployed for high priority work.

If the current Government is returned after the Scottish Parliament election, the announcement promises £50m per year on top. This will include an additional £20 million a year for residential rehabilitation that, according to the Government, will include a significant proportion of the extra funding towards developing sustainable capacity in regional centres.

The Scottish Government aims to focus on key areas urgently, including residential rehabilitation, rapid and appropriate access to treatment, an approach that supports people living with drug addiction to address underlying issues and the role of frontline third-sector organisations. The additional funding is welcome, more information is needed about the implications for people receiving benefits who want to enter rehabilitation services. It is essential that seeking help for addiction does not result in people losing benefits, resulting in financial hardship, and that people are not forced to chose between rehab, or their welfare benefits

During November 2,727 households made a statutory homelessness application to local authorities across Scotland, with 3,083 household accepting an offer of temporary accommodation. Local authorities and housing associations continued to support people out of homelessness by making a combined total of 1,986 permanent lets to homeless households. 

At the end of November 2020, a total of 13,815 households were in temporary accommodation across Scotland, awaiting an offer of a permanent tenancy, which is 18% higher than at the end of March 2020.

Around 600,000 tenants in Scotland live in homes provided by social landlords, with an additional 45K owner occupiers receiving services from RSLs. The Scottish Housing Regulator is the independent regulator of social landlords in Scotland, including councils that have housing stock.

The Scottish Government requested the support of the Veterans Scotland Housing Group to explore, investigate, report, and recommend a pathway to end homelessness for veterans in Scotland.  The remit and approach to the project is likely to include:

• The definitions of homelessness
• Transition from Service and the barriers to housing
• Establishing the experience of other homelessness projects and their impact
• Data Sources and the availability of accurate information

An initial meeting looked at clarifying what Homelessness means in a veterans context and the group will also scope who is responsible for ensuring service personnel effectively transition from service and if veterans should be classed as a ‘protected group’. 

At the same time, new UK legislation to help ensure armed forces personnel, veterans and their families are not disadvantaged by their service when accessing key public services was introduced to the House of Commons in January covering services such as healthcare, education and housing.

A network of services and systems for people who live and work with homelessness after it has happened already exists across Scotland. But this is often too late and sometimes too slow. Instead, we want to connect what we know about the causes of homelessness with the local knowledge and services that can reach people earlier — and closer to home.

This latest Route Map, the fourth to be produced by Everyone Home since the collective was launched in May, identifies the factors that increase the chance of homelessness and the protecting factors that can help prevent it. It also sets out policy asks to enable a place-based approach to preventing homelessness across every community in Scotland.

In late November members of the collective, including people with lived experience, called on political parties, MSPs and candidates in next year’s Scottish Parliament elections to get behind a ten-year plan to end homelessness. As the parties finalise manifesto pledges and prospective candidates declare, this third Route Map asked the Scottish Parliament to get behind five key asks in a 10-year commitment. That conversation continues as the parties finalise their pledges and commitments for May’s Scottish Parliament Election.

The five priorities are:

1. Prioritise prevention
2. More homes
3. End rough sleeping
4. No evictions into homelessness
5. Systems change

For more information about the work of Everyone Home visit the website

The Scotland Prevention Review Group was convened to take forward a recommendation in the Ending Homelessness Together High Level Action Plan published by the Scottish Government and COSLA in 2018 and updated in 2020. The group started work in 2019 looking into the legal duties needed for local authorities and other public bodies to prevent homelessness in Scotland.

The Group has developed recommendations around the legal duties on Scottish local authorities and wider public bodies to prevent homelessness and will provide advice on how to ensure the recommendations are successfully implemented. Their report and findings will be published on 18 February 2021. . More information on the Review Group can be found on Crisis’ website here.

The Prevention Commission was supported by Homeless Network Scotland to run parallel with the Review Group, creating a platform for people with frontline and lived experience of homelessness  to ensure that what is recommended draws from that experience, is realistic and can make a difference. More information on the Prevention Commission’ work can be found on the Homeless Network Scotland website here.