Meeting of the Parliament 19 March 2025
The report that was published earlier this month highlighted the devastating impact that living in poor-quality temporary accommodation can have on children’s lives. We have heard examples of that today, and I take addressing that as one of my main objectives as housing minister.
In response to the research findings, Shelter Scotland stated that we—all of us—
“have a duty to act”
on what we have heard. The Government is already acting. I talked about the £768 million investment in acquisitions and voids funding, which has enabled reductions in Edinburgh, as I think Foysol Choudhury mentioned, and in four other areas that are under the most sustained pressure.
However, we all need to act on the issue together. One key thing that was in the Crisis report was the need for the UK Government to act on local housing allowance and tackling poverty. Local housing allowance is being frozen again, and the Crisis report mentioned that that has the biggest influence in pushing people into homelessness. We need the Labour Government to act on that and, again, I ask colleagues from the Labour Party to engage with that. The Tories had that policy for a number of years and knew the impact of it, so they have to take responsibility on that point. That report mentioned that the policy on local housing allowance pushed people into homelessness, which the Tories have to acknowledge.
Our ambition—all members’ ambition—is for every household to have a settled home, and we are firmly committed to reducing the number of households that are in temporary accommodation.
I will touch on the point that Willie Rennie made about voids and acquisitions. In engaging with the housing to 2040 group, we have worked with local authorities on targeting homes that need to be purchased for families with large numbers of children. That is a targeted focus, and a reduction in temporary accommodation has started in 20 local authorities. That is key. I have talked about the £200 million that is increasing housing supply, and I will come on to Meghan Gallacher’s point about investment in a second.
We are all, rightly, concerned to hear of the experiences that children described in the research of living in conditions that breached the unsuitable accommodation order. Of course we are—everybody is. The action that the Scottish Government is taking now is intended to move us out of the housing emergency, but that will take time and requires a sustained and joint effort from all parties. I will touch on that in a second.
As was mentioned, local authorities—of all colours—are responsible for that, too. They are all working extremely hard to increase the supply of social, affordable housing and deliver services for people who experience homelessness. We have been working, and will continue to work, in partnership with local government. We will not support the Tory amendment, for the very reason that we have been working very closely with local authorities on their housing emergency action plans. We think that it is better to work with local authorities on their own local housing emergencies rather than the national picture. We have seen the effect of that, through a reduction of about 40 per cent in Edinburgh, for example.