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Statistical Notes
11.1 Statistics on persons who apply to local authorities under the provisions of the homeless persons legislation are collected using 2 returns:
a the number of applications received during the quarter (since 1990),
b the number of cases concluded during the quarter (since 1987), and
c the number of households in various types of temporary accommodation at the end of the quarter.
These returns are submitted to The Scottish Executive by local authorities, who have statutory duties under the legislation.
11.2. Authorities complete an HL1 return for each household which presents itself to the authority as homeless or potentially homeless. The unit of the return is the household, not the person. A household is counted each time there is an application — so that one household may appear in the statistics on more than one occasion during the year. The returns include households who apply to the authority even if the authority does not regard them as qualifying for assistance under the legislation. It should be noted, however, that households who do not approach an authority for assistance, for example persons sleeping rough who consider there is little likelihood of the authority providing them with accommodation, are not included in the statistics.
11.3. Each HL1 returns is submitted to The Scottish Executive once the case is concluded, that is when either:
a. the authority secures accommodation for the applicant, or
b. the authority transfers the household to another authority, or
c. the authority determines that no action is necessary under the legislation, or
d. contact with the applicant is lost, which is considered to have happened 28 days after the date of the last interview.
11.4 Cases take varying lengths of time to reach conclusion, and some tend to take a considerable number of months. In fact there will be households who applied during 1997-98 whose cases are still not complete, and for whom HL1 returns have yet to be submitted. For this reason, previous years information may differ from previous publications as figures are updated as more information becomes available.
11.5 Some authorities fail to submit complete returns. The number of HL1 returns received for any year is usually less than the number of applicant households recorded via the HL2 return, even allowing time for cases to reach conclusion. It is not possible to quantify and gross up for these shortfalls in earlier years, though we do so for more recent years, as described in paragraph 11.6 below.
11.6 Most of the information presented in this bulletin is derived from the HL1 return. However, since we know that the HL1 returns do not represent all of the households that which applied in each year (either because returns have failed to be submitted, or because cases have not reached a conclusion) from 1990-91 the national figures are grossed up to the total number of applications recorded on the HL2 returns. It is assumed that the cases which have not been submitted show the same characteristics as those that have, for example the distribution of household types among those cases not returned is the same as among those cases which have been returned. This is not necessarily the case but it is impossible to make any other assumption.
11.7 It should be noted that in the years 1990-91 to 1992-93, HL2 information from Glasgow District was not a reliable indicator of the final HL1 count. The Glasgow estimate, from 1990-91 to 1992-93, was obtained by uprating the HL1 count by the average unweighted percentage HL1 shortfall for all other districts. In addition to this, in 1994-95 Glasgow submitted HL1 returns for only 66 per cent of applications compared to the rest of Scotland for which HL1 were received for 93 per cent of applications. It was necessary, therefore to calculate Scotland figures for 1994-95 by grossing up the results for Glasgow separately from the results for the rest of Scotland.
11.8 For the years up to 1989-90, the totals and analyses are based on the number of individual case returns received, since information on total number of applications was not collected. Since we know that the number of case returns received in earlier years understates the true number of applications, the apparent increase (of 20%) from 29,100 applications in 1989-90 to 35,100 in 1990-91 overstates the true increase in applications. A comparison of local authorities’ estimates (from 1987-88) of the total number of completed cases with the number of detailed returns for completed cases shows that local authorities have submitted case returns for about 95 per cent of all completed cases. This varies from 92 per cent in 1988-89 to 98 per cent in 1989-90. This suggests that detailed returns have been received for around 95 per cent of applications in previous years. On this basis, the true growth in applications between 1989-90 and 1990-91 is probably around 16 per cent.
11.9 It should be noted that the tables showing local authority breakdowns (i.e. tables 3,4,5,8,10,11,15,16 and 21) present for each local authority the actual number of HL1 returns received, although the Scotland total is always grossed up to the total number of applications.
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