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Race Equality Advisory Forum

Housing action plan

Key Issues For the Scottish Housing Sector

• The need to provide housing which meets the specific housing needs and aspirations of minority ethnic and refugee communities. This includes issues around area preference, unit sizes, racial harassment and the specific needs of minority ethnic older people;
• The impact of the dispersal of asylum seekers on local housing providers and the need to identify actions to improve access for refugee communities, including a package of measures to prepare local communities and protect asylum seekers from racist abuse;
• The need for an agreed national strategy and code of practice for joint working for the prevention of racial harassment and effective measures for dealing with its perpetration and effects;
• The need for transparent and anti-discriminatory allocation of housing;
• The under-representation of people from minority ethnic communities at all levels in housing, including as staff, shareholders, members of management committees and tenants;
• The lack of research and information gathering around race equality and housing, including links between housing and social exclusion and the experience of homelessness amongst minority ethnic communities;
• The lack of consistent race equality training across the sector for staff and management committee members;
• Ineffective consultation with minority ethnic communities and organisations on the development, implementation and review of services and practices;
• Insufficient implementation of existing best practice across all public and voluntary sector housing providers;
• The lack of a specific and costed strategy for the development of community-led housing associations.

Actions

a) Leadership and strategic direction

1 This plan to be adopted and championed by the Scottish Executive and the New Executive Agency with specific responsibility for its delivery to be given to a designated Departmental Minister and a named senior official with a specific remit for race equality;

2 An advisory group to be brought together by the New Executive Agency to include race equality organisations with a Scotland-wide remit on housing; this group to advise the Scottish Executive and the New Executive Agency on the implementation of the plan and on race equality issues in general;

3 The Scottish Executive, the New Executive Agency, COSLA, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA), the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland (CIH) and all Registered Social Landlords to mainstream race equality issues within their planning and review processes;

b) Research and information gathering

1 The New Executive Agency to develop a national policy of ethnic monitoring across all public sector housing provision which would establish a national baseline of data and provide an essential means of identifying progress; this to include collection of data relating to specific groups such as asylum seekers, refugees and Gypsies/Travellers;

2 The New Executive Agency to commission a review of all race and housing research to establish gaps in information and to identify a programme of research development. In addition, this review to collate race and housing work carried out over the last 5 to 10 years by minority ethnic voluntary sector organisations through short-life projects;

3 The Scottish Executive's Homelessness Task Force, as part of their review of the causes and nature of homelessness in Scotland, to make specific investigation into the experience of homelessness amongst Scotland's minority ethnic communities and to identify proposals for action; to facilitate this work, data on homelessness to be ethnically disaggregated where possible;

c) Meeting the specific needs of minority ethnic communities

1 The New Executive Agency to review current policies around development funding and unit size with a view to encouraging the provision of larger units where appropriate to housing needs;

2 The New Executive Agency to require all Registered Social Landlords to demonstrate that they have considered minority ethnic needs in their strategic development and funding plans;

3 The New Executive Agency to prepare a specific and costed strategy to support the setting up and development of community-led housing associations and specific service providers to meet specific needs;

4 The New Executive Agency and COSLA to review the provision of housing for minority ethnic women suffering domestic abuse and older minority ethnic people requiring sheltered housing and to develop strategies to rectify any gaps in provision which are identified;

d) Anti-discriminatory and anti-racist measures

1 Local authorities and Registered Social Landlords to review their allocations policies and procedures to assess the potential for direct and indirect racial discrimination and to revise them where necessary;

2 All local authorities and Registered Social Landlords to publicise and explain the policies and rules governing their allocation of housing stock;

3 All Registered Social Landlords to provide information and advice to enable applicants and tenants to be aware of their rights;

4 All Registered Social Landlords to ensure that front-line staff and service users have access to interpreters;

5 All Registered Social Landlords to ensure that appropriate complaints procedures are in place and that they explicitly include procedures for complaints of racial discrimination and harassment;

6 The New Executive Agency and COSLA to draw up a national strategy and code of practice for joint working for the prevention of racial harassment and effective measures for dealing with its perpetration and effects; this strategy to incorporate the use of anti-social behaviour orders in tackling racist attacks and harassment and be drawn up in consultation with minority ethnic groups;

7 Community Safety Strategies to include explicit reference to racial harassment and measures taken to prevent and respond to incidents;

8 One of the roles of the Sociable Neighbourhood Co-ordinator to be the promotion and dissemination of good practice in dealing with anti-social behaviour and more specifically racial harassment;

e) Training and employment

1 The New Executive Agency to initiate a sector-wide review of training to establish core standards for the design and delivery of training with a focus on knowledge and skills;

2 The New Executive Agency to prepare guidelines on race equality training; these guidelines to form the basis of a centrally
co-ordinated national training strategy set in the context of continuous improvement to ensure that all staff and committee members receive race equality training appropriate to their duties;

3 The New Executive Agency, COSLA and Registered Social Landlords to address the under-representation of minority ethnic workers at all levels within the housing sector through the development of positive strategies to recruit and retain minority ethnic staff; consideration to be given to the potential use of national targets as a way of measuring progress;

f) Consultation, engagement and partnership

1 The New Executive Agency to require all Registered Social Landlords and local authorities to consult and involve minority ethnic communities and organisations in the development, implementation and review of their services and practices;

2 All public sector and voluntary organisations involved in the provision of housing services to improve their arrangements and capacity for joint working, particularly on race-related development issues; such joint working to include local strategies for dealing with racial harassment, new build appropriate to need, sharing of development staff and training placements, development and delivery of common training packages and the sharing of expertise;

3 The New Executive Agency and local authorities to provide capacity-building support to minority ethnic organisations to enable them to participate fully and effectively in consultation exercises around housing issues;

4 The Scottish Executive and the New Executive Agency to develop measures to tackle under-representation at all levels within the housing sector and to meet the relevant targets relating to public appointments;

5 The New Executive Agency to develop sustainable local race equality work in partnership with minority ethnic organisations. This should include funding a capacity building programme and information strategy for the housing sector;

g) Monitoring, auditing and reporting

1 The New Executive Agency, as part of its inspection role, to carry out an initial audit of housing provision by local authorities and Registered Social Landlords in order to better inform policy development. This audit to cover the following areas: access to and quality of housing; recruitment and selection of staff; racial harassment and service delivery; local authority planning procedures and interpreting and translation facilities;

2 The Scottish Executive and the New Executive Agency to review current proposals for performance standards and mainstreaming of equality issues as set out in the Single Regulatory Framework with minority ethnic and equalities organisations;

3 The New Executive Agency, local authorities and all Registered Social Landlords to ensure that race equality issues are clearly addressed within their annual auditing and reporting processes.

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