Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Our first item of business is to decide whether to take item 3 in private. Are we content to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. That was a great way to end, because there is good practice across local authorities, but that involves them choosing where they use their budgets locally, and it cannot be applied across the board. That is a good point for the committee to reflect on.

I thank everybody for their evidence. It was a marathon session and it is evidence that we needed to hear. If you have anything that you want to follow up with us, please feel free to do that in writing, as we are moving towards the conclusion of the inquiry. I hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.

We will go to Paul Ferguson for that and perhaps Karen Carrick from the Improvement Service as well.

Thank you for setting that out clearly for us.

Thank you very much for that powerful evidence. I certainly recognise from having worked in the homelessness support industry for a long time that that issue has always existed and that it is not new at all.

Theme 2 is rent arrears. My colleague Natalie Don, who is joining us remotely, will ask the first questions. After that, my colleague Emma Roddick, who is also joining us remotely, will come in.

We move to questions from Emma Roddick. I remind everybody that broadcasting will operate your microphone, so you do not have to worry about that.

Thanks very much for that. It is important to remind us about the change to universal credit and about people being given their housing payments in their hands. We have Scottish choices, so people can choose to pay their rent directly to their landlord, but people need to have knowledge of that process. That goes back to the point about people being armed with all the information to make the right decisions that work for them.

Welcome back and thank you, everybody, for making sure that you were back on time and thanks to those online for being back at your keyboards. Theme three is on council tax arrears but we have already touched on that a lot, so members’ questions may have changed.

Foysol, before we stop for a wee break, it is your turn.

There is some evidence of good practice across the country, with some housing officers becoming neighbourhood coaches—that coaching model is a different way of operating. Also universal credit teams are being set up that are proactively going out into communities and in some areas, as Karen Carrick said before, financial inclusion officers are based within school clusters. That is making a massive difference. A lot of good work is being done that needs to be passported across the country, and we need to think about the role that this committee could play in that.