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Operation of Homeless Persons Legislation
22/04/2008
The statistical release Operation of the homeless persons legislation in Scotland: quarters ending June 30 and September 30, 2007 has been published today by Scotland's Chief Statistician.
It provides a routine update for homelessness applications, assessments and outcomes to September 2007, as well as information on households in temporary accommodation and breaches of the Unsuitable Accommodation Order to December 31, 2007.
This is the first release following revision of homelessness data collection which took effect on April 1, 2007.
Two local authorities have not yet successfully implemented the new system and were unable to provide data for inclusion in the release. In addition, there is reason to believe data from several other local authorities may understate the situation on the ground.
While the Scotland-level figures for the most recent period include estimates to adjust for under-reporting, the figures in this release should be regard as provisional and will be updated in due course.
The main findings are:
- The most recent figures for the number of homelessness applications show a decrease of 8 per cent for the six months April - September 2007 compared to the same period in 2006 (from 30,721 to 28,376). Although the scale of the difference is likely to be exaggerated due to some degree of under-reporting, the direction of change is consistent with data from previous years which have shown a gradual slowing down of the observed rate of increase since 2003-04, and a decrease of 2 per cent between 2005-06 and 2006-07
- The latest snapshot figure for households in temporary accommodation was 8,633 at December 31, 2007. At the Scotland level, this represents an increase of 7 per cent compared to the situation at December 31, 2006. The longer term Scotland-level data indicate that the level of increase has been gradually tapering off since 2003, when increases were in the order of 30 per cent
- The most recent figure for households with children or pregnant women in temporary accommodation was 3,311 at December 31, 2007. This represents an increase of 481 households (17 per cent) compared to December 31, 2006. While earlier increases have been higher, more recent figures have been rather volatile, and it is too soon to tell what the longer term trend is likely to be
- Households with children or pregnant women in temporary accommodation are mainly provided with local authority or housing association accommodation (87 per cent), with a small minority (2 per cent) being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation. Over the past two years, there has been a decrease in the use of bed and breakfast for this group from 7 per cent in 2005
- A total of 35 breaches of the Unsuitable Accommodation Order were reported at 31 December 2007. Due to the relatively small numbers, there is considerable variation in the figures since local authorities began submitting data in 2005. However, the most recent figures for 2007 provide some indication that the figures may be dropping in that three out of the four data points show a decease when compared to the same period in 2006. The most recent number of breaches for 31 December 2007 were distributed across ten local authorities, of which two had more than five breaches. Twenty two local authorities had no breaches. The most recent figure represents 1 per cent of households with children or pregnant women in temporary accommodation at that point