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Our next item is an evidence session on the Housing (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. Today, we will hear from Paul McLennan, the Minister for Housing, and I welcome him and his Scottish Government officials: Catriona MacKean, deputy director, better homes division; Laura McMahon, solicitor, legal directorate; and Matt Howarth, policy officer, homelessness prevention team. Thank you for joining us.
Minister, I believe that you would like to make a short opening statement.
Yes, thank you, convener.
I thank the committee for the further opportunity to provide assurance on the Housing (Scotland) Bill. I understand that you have agreed with the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee that you will provide the committee with your stage 1 report shortly, and I am grateful for your time today.
In my evidence to this committee on 27 June, I highlighted key measures in part 5 of the bill on homelessness prevention duties. These are also an essential part of addressing the housing emergency, as preventing homelessness and supporting tenancies to be sustained both lead to less pressure on housing supply. I also emphasised the engagement with delivery partners that we continue to undertake to ensure that positive and sustained change is delivered.
With its renewed focus on prevention, the legislation as introduced builds on the strong housing rights that already exist for people who are homeless in Scotland. Those preventative measures have been shaped by significant stakeholder engagement since 2020, including the recommendations of the prevention review group, a public consultation and direct engagement with key organisations by both officials and ministers.
However, the introduction of the bill was never intended to signal the end of that journey. My officials and I continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders as we develop our approach to delivering those duties, in order to harness the opportunity to prevent and end homelessness, and to make a significant contribution to eradicating child poverty.
As I set out in my recent letter to the committee, the focus is now on plans for effective implementation of the new duties and driving forward cultural change towards shared public responsibility and earlier intervention. We hope that Parliament will support that approach.
Since we were last together, we have engaged with delivery partners on how the ask and act proposals in the bill could function in practice, and with social landlords on the domestic abuse measures. That engagement has made clear how much positive practice already exists, which we can build on, and that successful prevention is not always about doing more but about doing things differently. Getting early intervention right will avoid someone having to retell their story multiple times to service providers; it will mean that people get help faster; and it will make more effective use of public resources. It is vital investment.
In that way, shared public responsibility and early intervention also have the potential to deliver financial savings. Critically, that approach also benefits our future health, equality and prosperity. The new duties aim to strengthen consistency and transparency around prevention activity across Scotland through legislative change and to ensure that that happens at an earlier stage, while maintaining person-centred, flexible approaches to addressing the needs of individuals and families.
Clear messages are emerging from our recent engagement on our ambitious provisions to rebalance the whole-systems approach holistically around homelessness prevention, and I am keen that the next stage of engagement has a particular focus on how to foster partnerships and co-operation between relevant bodies, as outlined in the bill, in order to build on the strong rights that already exist in Scotland and to move us closer to our prevention aim. We will continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders on strong guidance that is tailored to different settings and builds on existing good practice; on clear expectations and a joint case for the benefits of cultural change to support prevention; on the resourcing, which I am clear is necessary to make the duties a success; and on the appropriate timescales for implementation.
As part of that next phase, I will be hosting an online event in October to bring together a wide range of stakeholders, including relevant bodies and local authorities. The aim of that event is to identify how we can support the co-operation required to implement each of the homelessness prevention duties and provisions in the bill. The committee is, of course, welcome to attend the event to hear the thoughts of stakeholders at first hand.
Overall, our homelessness prevention duties will help to avoid the trauma and disruption to people’s lives that homelessness causes. They are critical to our vision to end homelessness in the longer term.
I and my officials look forward to answering any questions that members might have on the bill.
Thank you for your statement, minister, and for extending to the committee an invitation to the event in October. I am keen to find out about the details of the event, so, if your officials could make the clerks aware of the dates, we can make committee members aware of that information, too.
We will now move to questions, and Jeremy Balfour is first.
Good morning. I want to ask a few questions based on your statement.
First, with regard to the ask and act duties, Crisis, in evidence to the committee, said:
“What we want to see in the bill is a much clearer articulation of what is meant by the duty to act.”—[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 13 June 2024; c 13.]
Having spoken to a few stakeholders, I think that there is a lack of clarity about what that means. Perhaps you could tell me what the duty would mean in practice if, for example, I were a nurse working in the accident and emergency department at the royal infirmary on a Thursday night and somebody came in who obviously did not have any housing. What duty to act does that nurse or doctor have, and how would they carry out their duties in practice, if this were to become law?
There are a few things to say on that. The legislation itself sets out what it means to ask and to act with regard to those duties. Acting is about working just where the person is now. We had a chat with the national health service, and examples such as yours were one of the things that were raised.
One of the key things that we have to do with our NHS is talk about training and guidance. What that looks like is incredibly important, so we will continue to work on that with the NHS and with different bodies within it. It is an on-going process. When we spoke to stakeholders involved in it, the need to have the training and guidance was one of the key points that they made. During the meeting with the NHS, we talked about those discussions, what that training and guidance will look like and how we will build upon that.
Obviously, the act duty involves working with key partners. I mentioned the holistic approach, too. We obviously need to make sure that there is a process in place so that we know what that actually looks like. In that way, if someone who is in that situation comes in, people will know how to act on that. They need to ask the proper questions about whether there is a risk of homelessness, but what does the person who is acting need to do beyond that?
The training and guidance are incredibly important on that point, but—
Can I push you on that, minister? You can train someone only when you know what you are training them in—
I am sorry, but I—
What are you training the nurse or doctor in? It is all very well to say that you are going to provide training, but what, practically, would you expect a nurse or doctor in a busy A and E to do for someone who is homeless on a Thursday night?
That builds on what we already have, because the NHS obviously operates with the local council at a particular time. I have seen cases where that has happened—for example, in work with the Simon Community to pass on cases. Therefore, that process already exists and this is building on that. It is not the case that that process does not exist at the moment.
The key thing, then, is to find out whether there is somebody who can come in and identify the homelessness. This is all about making sure that there is a procedure in place to deal with that, so we are building on what we already have in that regard.
At our meeting with the NHS last week, that is exactly what we talked about—the guidance and training on that particular point. These are existing procedures that we are trying to build on—in other words, this already happens—so we are not just starting this process now. That is the key thing. We have that feedback from people with lived experience, so the process is about making sure that the nurse or whoever is there is aware of the prevention duties. By that, I mean whether they are identifying that a person is at risk of homelessness on that particular night, knows whom they need to speak to about that and acts on that. It is not just a case of passing it on to the local authority.
Catriona MacKean might want to add something on that point.
The engagement that we have had over the summer has helped us to start conversations with health workers, and we are looking to build on those as we develop our guidance.
We are keen to get into the detail of the precise protocols that would be followed in those situations. In some cases, as the minister says, that is about building on practice that is already there. We know that we will need to build new connections in other cases and that new protocols will have to be followed. We know that that is key to ensuring that people are aware of the kinds of advice, advocacy and support that they can get from the relevant bodies and that people who are at risk can be connected to them so that support is joined up.
It will also be about what people can do within their existing roles and how they might provide care through, for example, a trauma-informed response. That is not new to the NHS—it exists already—but we hope that providing this legal framework will create a context in which those things become clearer, are more formalised and are planned in advance, and that there will be co-operation and collaboration.
Our approach is to put a lot of that into regulation so that we can have those conversations and build from the ground up, looking at what will work in different contexts. The engagement that we have had, particularly since the bill was introduced, has helped us to draw out what that would look like in the A and E context, which needs a very clear, step-by-step approach. In a community care setting, that sort of thing will be more fluid and flexible. We plan to get deeper into those things during the autumn and will work with Crisis as we do so.
Jeremy, before you go further, Kevin Stewart has a supplementary question.
I am glad to hear about the engagement, but I am one of those folks who disna like to see the reinvention of the wheel. We must look at best practice to ensure that the secondary legislation and guidance are right.
The Government, along with Fife Council and third sector partners, ran a pilot scheme at Queen Margaret hospital that applied trauma-informed practice. It was extremely successful in housing folk, and it dramatically changed the way in which health service staff, including doctors and nurses, worked with people. Protocols were in place for that pilot. Have we looked at them and are we going to apply them to the secondary legislation and the guidance, or are we going to ignore them?
I will bring in Catriona MacKean on that particular point, but you are right about best practice. Cyrenians does very well in the area of hospital outreach. We want to build on good practice and on the work that it has done, so we have met Cyrenians to build on what is already being done. That is really important. We have also been speaking to the change teams, who have experience in the healthcare sector, to build on what they are doing.
You are right that this is not about reinventing the wheel. Like me, you were previously a councillor, so you will know that people become homeless in different situations and have different experiences—some experiences are really good and others are not as good as they should be. The prevention duty is an attempt to build on what is already there. It is important to learn from Cyrenians and from the change teams and to build on that. When we spoke to NHS teams, one of the key things that they told us was about building on the protocols. This is not about starting anew. We are building on existing good practice and protocols.
I will ask Catriona MacKean to talk about the particular case that you mentioned. If she cannot, I will get back to you on that point. You are right that this is about building on existing good practice to ensure that people have a much more uniform experience that is better than it has been previously.
09:00
The Shelter project in Fife is, absolutely, a good example of things that work well, with the leadership of the local authority bringing things all together and supporting it to have the impact that it had. We are very much looking to draw in all such examples as we work with a range of local authorities to develop such approaches, and it will be critical to look at what has worked well. We are not assuming that such approaches will work well in every hospital or local authority context, but we are looking at what is working well, adapting it, sharing it and building on it for other settings.
Does Matt Howarth want to say anything about this area?
The in-reach hospital project run by Cyrenians was highlighted at the health event that we held. Going back to the committee’s first question, I should say that, at those events, we tried to work through the bill and explain precisely what is meant by the ask and act duty. With the ask element, you are working very much within your own functions—in other words, you are working not with a new audience but with people with whom you already come into contact, to ask the question about housing and to ensure that housing is part of your assessment of the person’s needs.
The act element, too, is very much about acting within your own powers. In the example that was given, we would expect that, if the person was homeless and had not been in contact with the local authority, the action that would be taken would be referral to the local authority. This is all about people who are threatened with homelessness and whose housing situation has been identified as unstable. The action might involve working with partners other than those in housing, and the expectation is that the relevant bodies will ask, “What can I do in my role for this person?” In fact, at the health event, we had people in different roles, and we had a very interesting contribution from NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service. They said that they could see the logic of doing this and how they might do it. Obviously, they would need to do it in a different way from other parts of the health system—perhaps they would need to use a triage process to carry out the action.
We are building on existing examples, and the clear message is that, although a lot of aspects of that approach are already evident across the country, it is still patchy and inconsistent, and the bill gives us the chance to bring some consistency across the country.
I will be very brief, having given a very good example that was highly rated by service users.
I want to ask about the voices of lived experience and what works for those people. Are we taking cognisance of what those voices have to say? It might well be that the NHS and the third sector think that something is quite good, but the reality is that the folks who need those services do not necessarily share that view.
I am sorry, minister, but, before you come in, I just want to say that I am conscious of time, and I must ask that we be as concise as possible with our questions and answers.
I have mentioned the change teams, who have direct experience of what you are asking about and are there at the start of the process. There were also the task and finish groups, which included people with lived experience.
We are very much listening to people with lived experience. Indeed, that is the most important part. Yes, we are asking about the legal duties on the NHS, the Scottish Prison Service and others, but this is all about whether we are providing the service that is needed for people who are at risk of homelessness.
I come back to the point that, previously, there was a mixed approach. If someone had the necessary training or guidance, the procedure would be in place and people would be dealt with earlier—but it was all dependent on that. We are trying to give legal certainty to the likes of the NHS and the Scottish Prison Service, but we are also looking at the training and guidance aspects and are working in partnership with those organisations to ensure that our reach goes as far as it can, that people get identified at an early stage and that the organisations ask and act, as part of their duties, and then pass people on, whether through referrals or whatever.
All of this has been happening very much through the change teams and through working with the likes of Cyrenians, which deals with such issues, too. We are taking into account lived experience, as it is incredibly important.
When the Finance and Public Administration Committee looked at the financial memorandum, it seemed quite critical of it. Moreover, the City of Edinburgh Council has stated that, if it were to implement the bill as it was, internal staffing would cost it £1.9 million a year, whereas the financial memorandum allocates only £1.6 million for all 32 local authorities. Are you intending to revise the memorandum before the end of stage 1 so that it gives realistic costs?
There are a number of issues. First, in relation to how a financial memorandum is set up, one key thing is that the guidelines say that it should give the “best estimates” of costs and savings. We worked with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in 2023 and we had a joint consultation with it in April 2022. We asked each local authority for its estimates at that time, and that helped us to put the financial memorandum together.
It is key that we keep the matter under live consideration. We will continue to work with local authorities on that. No budget has been set as such. To produce our financial memorandum, we followed the guidelines and engaged with COSLA and individual local authorities. That best estimate was based on consulting and working with local authorities. We will continue—
In the light of the information that has now been given by the City of Edinburgh Council and by other local authorities, will you revise the financial memorandum—yes or no?
If we need to revise it, we will. That is key. We will continue to engage with local authorities. When I meet local authorities, including the City of Edinburgh Council, we have that level of discussion. If the City of Edinburgh Council and other local authorities say that such a thing is happening, we will, of course, look to revise the financial memorandum, if necessary, at that point. It is an on-going exercise. A key thing to stress is that we engaged with local authorities consistently prior to the financial memorandum being published. However, if we need to look at it, we will do so and will consider bringing something forward.
I am happy to discuss the matter offline with you. I discuss it with local authorities all the time, but I am happy to consider it again if that is the information that is coming through.
I am conscious of the time, so I will come back in later.
I, too, am conscious of the time. I call Bob Doris.
Minister, it was good to see the engagement over the summer. In previous questioning, I mentioned other groups that we could not necessarily place a statutory duty on but that would be key partners in relation to the ask and act duty—in particular, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office. I also mentioned general practitioners, although there might be challenges in that regard for different reasons. Have you met any of those three key organisations during the summer? If not, is it your intention to do so?
I have a second, follow-up question. We might not be able to compel the DWP to have an ask and act duty, for example, but we can see clearly why, given its role in benefits, it might be a central organisation. Could we still write it into legislation by, for example, placing a requirement on the Scottish Government to reach out to it for a formal concordat or protocol, or ask it to volunteer to be part of the ask and act duty? That would be a powerful thing to do, and I would quite like that to be in the bill or in secondary legislation. The fact that we cannot compel the DWP to do anything does not mean that we should not acknowledge in legislation its key role.
First, on whether I plan to engage, my answer is yes. That is incredibly important. As I said, there is an event in October, and I will plan to have meetings before or slightly after that. I know that you have referred to this issue before, Mr Doris, so I am happy to do that.
As you know, we cannot compel the DWP to do anything, but we can discuss how we can work more closely with it, as we engage with the NHS, the Scottish Prison Service and so on. I will meet those organisations to discuss such issues in more detail. We cannot compel them, but we might be able to discuss the possibility of a concordat, as you mentioned, with the DWP. Until we have such a discussion, it is hard to see what might evolve from it, but we will certainly look to engage with not just the organisations that are named in the legislation but those that are outwith it.
I know that there have been discussions at official level, but I intend to meet those organisations. Does Catriona MacKean or Matt Howarth want to add anything about the discussions that we have had so far?
Yes. In relation to best practice, there are good examples of the DWP and JobCentre Plus taking forward exceptional work locally, on the voluntary basis that you described. There is a good working relationship with DWP colleagues across Scotland, and we are keen to unpack the issues and look at what can be done. The situation is similar with the other bodies that you mentioned. We can provide some further thinking on that—
That is helpful, Ms MacKean. I am sorry for cutting across you, but I am conscious of the time. We want to keep questions moving.
Minister, would you be minded to include in the bill a duty on the Government to continue to build those relationships? We cannot put a duty on the DWP, although I am glad that there is good work in practice, but we could put a duty on our Government to continue to reach out in such a way.
I will ask Laura McMahon whether that is practical from a legislative or legal point of view. I appreciate the point that you are making, and I would be comfortable with that.
Binding Scottish ministers to continue to work with the DWP would work only if the duty was reciprocal. There would not be legal certainty in order to do that, but, on the point about engagement, we can engage voluntarily to get it to work with us on those duties. However, as a devolved nation, we would not look to set that out in legislation.
Minister, that might be the advice that you are getting at the moment, but I am thinking about the legislation saying that the Scottish Government must engage in that way.
I am happy to take that point away and discuss it with colleagues. I take your point and totally understand it, so I am happy to come back to you on that in writing.
I am delighted that there are on-going positive relationships. I am not trying to fix something that might not need to be fixed, but I am trying to get assurances for the longer term.
Again, it very much comes down to local circumstances, but I will be happy to come back to you on that point.
Good morning. It will come as no surprise that I feel strongly about rural issues. We took evidence from the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, which said that solutions need to be specifically suited to a rural context. Homeless Network Scotland stated that the bill probably does not go far enough on specific geographies and circumstances in rural areas. All In For Change said that there are issues with travel costs and public transport in rural areas, and the committee was also told that no consideration has been given to how the processes could cut people off from support networks and their work.
That is quite a lot of information. What have you taken on board from that extra information to ensure that rural areas will have the equality of service that they require?
That is an important point, and I know that you have mentioned it previously. One of the key things is the national approach to what we are trying to do. Each local authority that I have spoken to is asking about the circumstances in its area. You are right that a rural setting can be very different.
Just last week, we met 140 people who are involved in the social housing sector, and that point was picked up. It comes down to how we build local engagement. We have to deal with the issues in rural communities as well as those in urban Glasgow and Edinburgh, and those are different settings altogether.
One of the key things is to build on the legislation, because we are not coming from a standing start. Prevention work has already been undertaken, but we now need to build on that and identify the gaps.
At the event in October, we will look to build on the holistic approach that we need to take. That is key. Again, as you know, there are different circumstances in different areas, with people having different levels of understanding of what their duties should be. We need to identify the gaps and take a more holistic approach. The online event in October will give us the opportunity to start talking about what we need to do and join things together.
Another key point is that there is a role for local authorities in talking about the community planning approach. That is not part of the bill as such, but it is important that local authorities consider the community planning element. That is a much more holistic approach. Having chaired a community planning team previously, I know that it is really important that we make sure that services in different areas are linked up.
The process will be on-going. We need to identify the gaps and make sure that each local authority is dealing with the issue by taking as holistic an approach as they can. It is about building on that. That was mentioned in our discussions with the 140 practitioners, for example. We need to build on those close relationships. Having a legal duty to do so will bring them closer together, but we need to build on that.
The legislation will come in, but that will not be the end of the process. The situation will continue to evolve. As we have talked about, evaluation and monitoring are key, and we will be speaking to the regulator about how we build on that. It is an on-going process. It is key that we identify the gaps, try to close them and make the system as holistic as possible.
09:15
I appreciate that, minister. That brings us back to the question about what training and resources will be provided. The point about using best practice was well made earlier, but, equally, we are looking for people to ask and act, and the act part focuses on two or three specific and key bottleneck points. It will always come down to people at those points doing the work to make sure that we reduce homelessness. We are always going to have that bottleneck, are we not? How are we going to stop that?
It is key that—this goes back to the point that Mr Balfour made—when the legislation is in place, it is properly resourced. It is clear that one of the issues is to do with identifying where the bottleneck is. In producing the financial memorandum, we asked local authorities to give their best estimates at the time, and the financial memorandum was based on those. As we get into further engagement, one of the key things will be to identify what the actual resource requirement is. Mr Balfour mentioned Edinburgh as an example. If members have identified particular circumstances or local authorities in that regard, they can feed them in to the team and we can pick up those issues.
We need to ensure that the legislation is properly resourced. It has been proven that money that is spent on prevention saves us money down the line, so it is key that we resource the legislation properly. We also need to identify the bottlenecks. The position in a rural area could be different from the position in other areas, and the Borders has completely different circumstances from the Highlands. Some areas might have similar experiences, but it is important to identify that. The more engagement we have with local authorities and the deeper our understanding of that is, the better. First, it will prevent people from becoming homeless. Secondly, it is a spend-to-save initiative, because it will prevent people from going through the process. The resourcing is incredibly important.
I appreciate that. I have one last wee question. There is also a rural aspect to fuel poverty, and Scottish Land & Estates suggested speaking to rural landlords about that. Did you do that?
I have engaged with Scottish Land & Estates on a number of occasions and the issue has come up, so we have discussed it. I have probably met it on four, five or six occasions in the past year or so, and we have engaged on the issue. SLE will back up that I have engaged with it on the issue.
Have rural landlords been involved in those discussions, not just Scottish Land & Estates?
We have had round-table meetings, so the subject has been discussed. We have had two or three of those, if I remember correctly. There has been direct involvement of landowners.
That is brilliant. Does that work form an active part of the fuel poverty standard process?
Yes. It has to. I return to the point that all 32 local authorities are different. We need to try to get the right approach across Scotland.
Okay. Thank you, minister.
Good morning. One aspect of the bill that the committee is interested in and concerned about is the domestic abuse provisions. We want to ensure that they are being engaged with. I note that, in the summer engagement, you met the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Chartered Institute of Housing to discuss those provisions. Will you give an update on those conversations? Do you feel that the discussions were productive in enabling understanding of the required training and the capacity of social landlords to take the action that they will need to take?
Yes. I meet the SFHA regularly to discuss a number of issues. When I met the housing associations in Easterhouse a couple of weeks ago, they talked about their roles in development and wider involvement in the community. They talked about their role in providing advice, and domestic abuse was an area that they picked up. We are engaging with them to try to maximise what already happens in their work—for example, with Glasgow City Council. The work of housing associations is one example, but there are also organisations such as the Wheatley Group, which has more resource and income and is working very closely on what will come through under the bill.
It is very much about trying to get a uniform approach. How do we make sure that the smaller housing associations have the necessary training? The SFHA has said that some housing associations are trying to pool some of their resources round around the domestic abuse part, because that is really important.
For a lot of housing associations, that is relatively new. However, it very much came across from the SFHA that it is really keen to make sure that it plays its part. I will continue to discuss that with the SFHA. As I said, it is easier for the likes of the Wheatley Group, for example, which has the resource to do that, but we are very much looking at pooling teams in order to provide that.
I visited four Borders registered social landlords that work closely together on the domestic abuse advice that they give. This is very much about building on that work. I do not want to say that this is new work, because they have been working on it, but they are all keen to focus on it. Therefore, it is about looking at how we can maximise the resource that they have for that. There are good examples such as those Borders housing associations, which work closely together to ensure that they pass on information.
It was a similar situation with CIH and the discussions that I have had with CIH about the training that is required in the housing sector itself. It had mentioned and discussed training on domestic abuse. Those discussions are on-going in CIH and the whole housing sector in order to build that up.
Thank you for that answer. I make a similar point to Mr Stewart’s point about not reinventing the wheel. A lot of good practice already exists, and many RSLs have good policy. However, the challenge is often to ensure that those policies can be put into practice and that action can follow, which is what everyone wants to see in such scenarios. The responses of Scottish Women’s Aid and the Scottish Women’s Convention pointed to the fact that the actions that were outlined and the recommendations that were contained in the report, “Improving housing outcomes for women and children experiencing domestic abuse” still have to be pushed forward and not lost in this context. Will the minister say something about progress on that and engagement with that piece of work?
We are still engaging on that. I will bring in Catriona MacKean, who has been directly involved in some of the discussions. Colleagues who work in criminal justice are trying to push that forward. We are very cognisant of that, because that work is important and we need to get it moving as we move forward with the bill.
The inclusion of the requirement in the housing bill for all social landlords to have a domestic abuse policy is a significant and enabling step, which is driving some of the additional engagement and extra attention on the part of landlords that the minister has been describing. That is welcome and it helps us to draw out good practice and start bringing it together.
I agree that the totality of that work needs to be looked at. Part of our implementation work informed the guidance, particularly the requirement for a gendered analysis of policies and processes so that we support social landlords and other partners to take that approach in order that there is an understanding that how a service is being delivered is as important as what the service is. We are looking to take that work forward as part of the wider piece of implementation work that will follow in the wake of the bill.
We are talking about social landlords, but we have also had discussions with the private rented sector. As members will know, hundreds of thousands of landlords are involved in the PRS, so we have met the Scottish Association of Landlords to discuss its approach and it is aware of what it needs to look at. Discussions are on-going with the broader PRS when it comes to individual landlords or landlords who have a small number of properties. However, again, we are focusing and working on that with SAL, and it knows that it needs to develop that approach.
Marie McNair, who joins us online, has the next questions.
Good morning. On the back of Mr O’Kane’s questions, what engagement have you had with, for example, Scottish Women’s Aid, which raised concerns about the fact that the equally safe framework did not align with the bill and other issues, such as victims not being notified of perpetrators being released from prison and the impact that that has with regard to homelessness?
I have met Scottish Women’s Aid regularly, and that has been discussed. It is incredibly important. You gave a couple of examples. One involved the Scottish Prison Service, which is a key stakeholder. We have discussed the issue with it and will develop it further together. Again, we are trying to build on best practice. We heard a couple of examples in which some prisons are probably further ahead than others. A key thing that was talked about was consistency. That is an important point.
More broadly, when it comes to how we deal with domestic abuse, in my time as a councillor—which you were, too, Ms McNair—I saw how that was handled. It is partly about making sure that we are properly resourced—and a part of that is about training. Having dealt with it and seen it at first hand through people with lived experience, I can say that sometimes it depended on who they ended up with in the local authority. If somebody had the necessary training, they knew how to deal with the situation and had the necessary ability, which comes back to how to deal with somebody who is in trauma. Alternatively, if somebody had not been trained, that could actually make the situation worse.
One thing to talk about is how to make sure that victims are aware through the Scottish Prison Service, local authorities, the NHS or women’s aid organisations, for example. Again, it is about trying to strengthen what is already there. I have seen examples in which the council has dealt with the situation very well, and that helps the person quite quickly. However, if the situation is not dealt with, as you will have seen, it can result in more trauma.
Again, it is about having a more focused and more holistic approach. Why does it happen that nobody passes on the information from the SPS, the NHS, Scottish Women’s Aid or the local authority? If it is not handled well, it makes the situation worse.
Discussions with local authorities are on-going. The issue was also raised in the discussions that we had with the 140 practitioners that I mentioned. If you can attend our event in October, that point can be raised. However, it has been discussed within local authorities, within the Scottish Prison Service and with Scottish Women’s Aid.
Again, it is about building on what is already there. The legislation will give a duty to ensure that we pick up on that. We cannot have the inconsistency that we have at the moment.
As you said, a lot of good practice is already happening in councils, and I certainly welcome the further work that you are doing.
Good. Thank you.
I have two quick questions. I will go back to the practice of children being held in temporary accommodation. Crisis’s written submission said that involved about 10,000 children in Scotland. I know that that is a concern for you as it is for everyone in the Parliament. How will the bill change what will happen to those most vulnerable people in society?
Do you mean in terms of—
I mean in terms of how the legislation will work. What difference will it make to a local authority in dealing with those children in temporary accommodation?
There are a number of things in that. I will come on to the bill in a second. The policy that the legislation is wrapped around is important. We met COSLA last week and talked about funding for additional acquisitions. At that stage, for the ability to look at acquisitions and voids, it was agreed to focus on the local authorities that are under more pressure than others at the moment.
The housing to 2040 strategy group also met a couple of weeks ago, and key things that we said were, first, that we should try to make more properties available and, secondly, that there should be a real focus on how we get children, specifically, out of temporary accommodation as soon as possible. That is the supply side of how we deal with the issue.
Last week, I met Glasgow City Council. It probably has the biggest issue at the moment, so we talked about how to bring more supply. Again, there are voids, acquisitions, allocation policies and so on.
A key thing in the legislation is the holistic approach. It comes back to being aware between the two-month period and the six-month period. Having been a councillor, you will know that two months is not enough for someone who presents as potentially homeless. We need that longer period. That part of the legislation on its own—just trying to identify what the risk could be—is really important.
As we know, the Crisis homelessness monitor talked about the local housing allowance as one of the two biggest drivers of the rise in homelessness, particularly in families with children. I will pick that up with my United Kingdom Government equivalent, as I tried to do previously. It is also about the level of universal credit and dealing with poverty. Many people who arrive in that situation are in poverty, so that six-monthly approach is incredibly important. If there is necessary financial help that they can get, that is really important.
Again, we need a holistic approach from local authorities and from, for example, the NHS or link workers. One of the key things at the NHS level is the experience of link workers. I met link workers in Edinburgh six or seven months ago. One of the biggest drivers for people getting into that situation in Edinburgh is poverty, so it is about trying to identify the link workers and their role in the broader NHS to pass people on to get financial advice and so on that picks up on the key issues.
The six-monthly approach is incredibly important. It is about engaging with the NHS on its approach to identifying problems at an early stage. A fifth to a quarter of women who end up in homelessness do so because of domestic abuse, so it is also about engaging with the likes of Women’s Aid. If people are in hospital, it is about identifying that. If somebody has suffered domestic abuse, they might end up in hospital. How do we pick up on that? There are a number of occasions when we can.
The real issue comes back to that holistic approach and dealing with it at a much earlier stage. That is the incredibly important part of the issue. It also comes back to Roz McCall’s point about making sure that we are dealing with homelessness not just in urban settings but in rural settings. Early engagement and the holistic approach that the bill is pushing is incredibly important.
One of the things that is highlighted in the communication that you have sent to the committee is a lack of consistency. You highlight that in relation to sustainable housing on release for everyone—SHORE—standards. You have stated that there is best practice out there, but, quite frankly, those of us around the table know that in some places the practice is pretty abysmal. How will you ensure that uniform consistency and good practice are implemented through the bill and regulation?
As a final point, one thing that happened during the Covid emergency was folk just getting on with it and making sure that they met people’s needs. How do you make sure that that ethos carries on, and have you looked at what happened during Covid to shape the bill and the regulation to be the best that it possibly can be?
There are a number of things in there. One, as you said, is building on best practice. You mentioned the SHORE standards and we talked to the Scottish Prison Service about that. On-going engagement with it is key.
You said that you have talked to a lot of people, which is not a bad thing—talking and listening is good—but have you and ministerial colleagues instructed the Scottish Prison Service to ensure that best practice is exported across the Scottish prison estate?
I would not say instructed, because one of the key things—whether it is about health and social care or the Scottish Prison Service—is working with them as partners. It is about learning from the lived experience of people who have had to go through the Scottish Prison Service or the NHS. It is very much about co-design and co-production. You were keen to talk about that in relation to the national care service. For me, building that together and building on best practice is the really important part of it, and we meet the Scottish Prison Service regularly to do that.
The challenge within the organisation is to build on the culture that is already there. The Prison Service is really keen to build on that and work as partners and it has been speaking to us not just about what it does within its organisation, but about how it can work closely with, for example, the NHS. It is very much about co-design and co-production.
I get that point about co-design, co-production and co-operation but, with regard to scrutiny, there comes a point where, if a body is not doing what it needs to be doing—such as adhering to the SHORE standards—there has to be a way of holding that body accountable. How are you holding the Prison Service accountable for not reaching the standards?
The prisons inspectorate would look at the SHORE standards with regard to specific points around the prisons.
We are in discussions with the Scottish Housing Regulator about what that scrutiny looks like, and building on that is one of the key things. You are right that there is no point in just saying that we are trying to get improvement. How do we evaluate that? How do we monitor that? That is the important part. For example, we talked with the Prison Service about remand prisoners. What does it need to do when prisoners are released early? What do we do about that? Again, some of that is about what the prisons inspectorate does and how we work with the housing regulator. We are in discussion with them about what happens at that particular moment. I will maybe ask Catriona MacKean or Matt Howarth to comment on that particular point. We are engaging with the housing regulator to ask how we evaluate and monitor that.
Again, some of the key things will be about getting figures from the local authorities and engaging with them on a local basis about how important that is. We are in discussion with the housing regulator to make sure that the standards that we expect—and how we measure and evaluate them—will be part of the discussions going forward.
I do not know whether Catriona MacKean or Matt Howarth have anything to add on that.
Just as the ask and act duty is coming in as a new duty on the relevant bodies but is within their existing powers—they ask and they act within those existing powers—we are looking to the existing regulatory frameworks. How do we need to shift the way that those regulatory frameworks work on the existing relevant bodies to account for the new duty and the new legislation that is coming in in a way that responds practically to what is possible and will be beneficial? That will be the key way that we look to ensure accountability and monitoring across the new system.
With regard to the exact nature of how that comes about within the Prison Service, the SHORE standards are an important piece of work. In some cases, they are well established and well understood, but they are certainly not consistently applied in the way that we would hope. That has to be a key starting point for those discussions with regard to the Scottish Prison Service.
Matt, do you want to come in with more detail?
I am conscious of the time, and I have a quick question before we conclude.
Minister, what work, if any, has been done on stigma in relation to homelessness?
Do you mean as part of the bill?
Yes.
You will know from dealing with people when they arrive at that point that nobody wants to be homeless. Some people arrive there very quickly for various reasons. One of the key aspects of the wider discussions that we have had with the likes of the Scottish Prison Service is how we deal with prisoners who are leaving prison. If we do not deal with that, particularly for remand prisoners, they will end up sleeping on a friend’s couch or sleeping rough. One of the key things is to avoid that situation.
It is also about trying to engage with the NHS at a local level. It is not so much about discussing stigma as it is about making sure that, in dealing with people who are at that point, we give them the respect that they deserve, which comes back to the crux of the matter. We cannot have people leaving prison and going to sleep on a friend’s couch or sleeping rough. That is why we are trying to deal with remand prisoners in a way that solves that issue by changing the period from two months to six months.
It is the same when it comes to domestic abuse. Women suffer stigma because of domestic abuse. If we identify potential homelessness in domestic abuse cases over six months rather than two months, that will allow us to deal with such situations more quickly and manage them in the best way possible. We talked about the fund to leave, which was brought in. We worked closely with Women’s Aid on giving women the ability to leave by providing them with funds. It is about building on that work and managing the situation rather than people getting into a position where they quickly become homeless. It is literally a crisis situation at that particular point. The stigma issue is dealt with as part of the whole thing. It is about trying to plan as much as possible, and moving from the two-month period to the six-month period, as well as the legal obligations, gives us the ability to do that.
I thank the minister and his officials for coming along today.
In the coming weeks, the committee will report to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on the evidence that we have taken on the bill.
I will suspend the meeting for the set-up of our next agenda item.
09:40 Meeting suspended.Air adhart
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2025-26