Document Category: Key Policy and Strategy Resources

Measuring Impact Task and Finish Group Final Report and Recommendations

The Ending Homelessness Together Monitor is designed to measure the impact of the Scottish Government-COSLA joint Ending Homelessness Together Plan in Scotland.

The Monitor aims to report on indicators that reflect the wide-ranging, interlinked and predictable causes of homelessness including poverty and inequality, strength of labour markets and welfare levels, housing supply and affordability.

Read the recommendations made by the group, one of four thematic and cross sector task-and-finish groups appointed by the Scottish Government’s Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. How homelessness is measured in Scotland
3. Data gaps and limitations
4. Measuring what matters
5. Recommendations and Schedule

Why Empty Homes Matter (2022)

Why Empty Homes Matter (2022)
How bringing empty homes back to use can contribute to delivering the vision and principles in Housing to 2040

Empty homes have an important role to play in helping to deliver the right homes, in the right places for people in Scotland. The Scottish Government has published Housing to 2040. It sets out an ambitious vision of what housing should look like by 2040 and a plan of how to achieve this vision. Bringing empty homes back into use will help deliver on all four parts of this plan;

More homes at the heart of great places
Bringing empty homes back to use can help to meet the demand for affordable homes in our most densely populated towns and cities. It can also help to revive and revitalise town centres, villages and rural communities that have seen population decline, helping to once more make them great places that people are proud to call home.

Affordability and choice
By bringing empty homes back to use, alongside delivering on the ambitious government commitment to provide an additional 110,000 affordable homes over the next ten years, of which 70% must be social homes, local authorities can make full use of the housing resources at their disposal. This will ensure that there is the widest possible range of types and tenures of homes available to all, irrespective of which part of the country or council they live in.

Affordable warmth and zero emissions homes
Bringing empty homes back in to use can help to drive down the carbon emissions caused by housing and housing construction. Where the home is retrofitted to improve energy performance, it can also help to drive down the cost of heating and reduce the operational carbon emitted.

Improving the quality of all homes
Every empty home has been a home for someone in the past, and could potentially be a home for someone again in the future. By working to support renovation of suitable empty homes and returning these homes back to use, local authorities can help to breathe new life into old homes, improving the quality of housing stock and improving the quality of life in the communities with empty stock.

12 pages

Further information

Updated 09.04.25

Bringing empty homes back into use: audit of privately owned empty homes (2023)

Bringing empty homes back into use: audit of privately owned empty homes (2023)
The Indigo House Group Anna Evans, Mandy Littlewood, Regina Serpa, Andrea Paterson, Eddy Graham

The audit has considered the current picture of empty homes in Scotland; the key barriers to, and opportunities for, bringing empty homes back into use in this context; the existing approaches and interventions used to bring empty homes back into use; and whether these approaches could be improved and what further action could be taken.

136 pages

Contents
1. Introduction and research aims
2. Research methodology
3. Empty homes in Scotland
4. The progress and barriers in bringing empty homes back into use
5. Current approaches to bring empty homes back into use 74
6. Value for money assessment
7. Areas for improvement and learning from alternative approaches
8. Conclusions and recommendations

ISBN 978-1-83521-314-8

Further information

Updated 09.04.25

Youth Homelessness Prevention Pathway

One of a suite of pathways committed in the Ending Homelessness Together plan to prevent homelessness earlier among groups of people most at risk.

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Homelessness Prevention
3. Youth Homelessness: Background and Context
4. Scottish Policy and Legislative Framework
5. Young People and Adolescence
6. Poverty, Education and Employment
7. Young People and Health
Adverse Childhood Experiences
8. Ensuring Equality
9. Families & Relationships
10. Young People with care experience or on the edges of care
11. LGBT Youth Homelessness
12. Children and young people in conflict with the law
13. Recommendations for Change
14. Implementing the Recommendations
15. Prevention Map

Ending Destitution Together Progress Report – Year Two 2022-2023

Summary
Ending Destitution Together (EDT) aims to improve outcomes and support options for people with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) living in Scotland. The strategy was developed jointly by Scottish Government and COSLA and published on 24 March 2021. Engagement to inform the development of the strategy included input from frontline staff in third sector support organisations, local authorities, public services, legal practitioners and people with lived experience of NRPF and destitution. The strategy will run until 2024 and is being delivered in partnership between the Scottish Government and COSLA. The strategy builds on an inquiry by the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee and its report: Hidden Lives – New Beginnings. It takes a preventative approach that aims to support people to resolve the issues they face before they reach a point of crisis. For people who experience destitution, it aims to improve the safety nets that are available in Scotland.

Contents

  • Strategy Delivery and Implementation
  • Essential Needs
  • Advice and Advocacy
  • Inclusion
  • Looking ahead
  • Continued commitment
  • UK Legislative Changes

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Last Updated: 26.2.25