 I welcome you to the 18th meeting in 2014 of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee. I remind everybody to switch off their mobile devices, as they do affect the broadcasting system. Some committee members may consult their papers on tablets, because we provide them on digital format. 6. Agenda item 1 is item private. May I seek the agreement of the committee to take in private to allow the committee to consider its work programme. Is that agreed? Is that agreed, thank you. Agenda item 2 is homelessness in Scotland. Today, we are going to hear evidence from the Scottish Housing Regulator as part of the committee's follow up to its 2012 homelessness commitment inquiry, which we undertook in 2011-12. Representatifs of Scottish Housing Regulatory join us today and its recent report on housing options ties in closely with the areas that the committee hopes to explore in the coming months. I welcome Michael Cameron, chief executive and Christine McLeod, director of regulation, governance and performance of the Scottish Housing Regulatory. Would either or both of you like to make some opening remarks? Good morning. Just to thank the committee for the invitation to speak to our recent housing options thematic inquiry and to give evidence to the committee very briefly, we would want to highlight that our board selected housing options as the subject for the Scottish Housing Regulator's first thematic inquiry, not only because our statutory objective includes protecting the interests of people who are homeless or who may become homeless, but also because sustained achievement of the 2012 target has been an important focus of our regulation of landlords for some years. We also recognise that housing options have been promoted as a key way for landlords to deliver on that target and because there have been quite a range of views expressed just about how effective housing options were. Our board also took into account this committee's recommendation that SHR work with colleagues in the Scottish Government to ensure that services delivered by a housing options approach are consistent across Scotland and that local authorities are meeting their legislative duties so that the thematic inquiry was designed to address the committee's recommendation. It is important to say that housing options are widely recognised as a good policy response to homelessness but, to date, there has not been an in-depth evaluation of its effects. We aim to assess the success of the new housing options approach, its impact on statutory homelessness, what outcomes are achieved for people seeking help from local authorities through the thematic inquiry approach. That is about getting a national picture on whether housing options are an effective way to prevent homelessness. It might be worthwhile to state that there has been a very positive response from stakeholders to our recommendations in the thematic inquiry report. We published our findings with recommendations on 9 May, and those recommendations in the report are focused on the Scottish Government and councils. The intent with the report is that it does act as a catalyst for improvement and the immediate reaction from stakeholders to the report has been positive. We have been encouraged by how the key stakeholders—the Scottish Government, Alachow and Coslump local authorities—have already committed to using the report to improve the delivery of housing options in Scotland. They have accepted our recommendations and are already making progress in implementing the recommendations. Thank you very much. Can you provide a brief overview of why you undertook the study and the methodology that you used to carry it out? We were conscious that housing options had been taken up by many local authorities as an approach to dealing with the prevention of homelessness. We knew that there were not, although there were views expressed and some studies done on housing options, there had not been an in-depth national evaluation on the effectiveness of housing options, and therefore we wanted to look at that particularly. In terms of our methodology for the thematic inquiry, we were looking at gathering evidence from a wide range of sources. We looked at and analysed national performance and statistical information. We reviewed what other research and studies had been said about housing options. We looked in-depth and on-site at the delivery of housing options in six case study local authorities, so we saw what happened. That included reviewing 280 housing option cases, shadowing 60 interviews by the local authority with people who were seeking their assistance. We have tenant assessors who work with us as well, and they carried out a mystery shopping exercise, so they phoned local authorities as if they were looking for assistance. We also surveyed the other 26 local authorities who were not at the six case study local authorities, so that gave us that national profile and national picture. We had also used and built on the findings from inquiries that we carried out in recent years with individual local authorities around homelessness. We also discussed with a range of stakeholders what their views were, so all of that fed into the evidence base that we used for the thematic inquiry report. It is perhaps worth saying that we used the findings from the six case studies at an aggregate level to inform our assessment of the success of housing options nationally. We did not report on each council's performance. The report describes that local authorities are at varied stages in their development of the housing options approach. How wide is that variation that exists between local authorities? Obviously, we had a snapshot when we did our homelessness inquiry. For example, most local authorities seemed to be improving, but Scottish Borders, East Renfrewshire and Murray have gone up. Murray was one of the places that we undertook our study, and he was one of the beacons of what was happening. We certainly found variation across the local authorities. Housing options are a relatively new approach. There is not a national set of guidelines to direct and support local authorities on how they deliver housing options within the homelessness prevention service. We found that local authorities were developing their own individual approaches, so that variation is dependent on how each local authority delivers its homelessness services and how housing options are integrated into those services. Most local authorities were very enthusiastic about the potential for housing options to make a difference to the outcomes that homeless people could get. They were enthusiastic about it as a positive way to give people good advice and genuine choices. We found that, because it is a relatively new approach, there was not that consistency that tends to develop over time. We found that some local authorities were more advanced in their development of housing options and others had yet to fully implement it. Although some local authorities have been coming together to share good practice, to share lessons from their own experiences, we saw that there was clearly much further potential to do even more if there was a national framework and national guidance to support local authorities. Mark Ruskell I have a couple of questions on housing options in practice. What have been the main changes that local authorities have made to the services in moving towards a housing options approach to tackling homelessness? We are seeing a variety and range of ways that local authorities were using to deliver housing options in practice. We were seeing evidence of really good links and referral arrangements to other council services and to other agencies. Some local authorities made good use of mediation services to try to achieve appropriate outcomes for people. We also found that most local authorities had changed their officers' roles and responsibilities with the introduction of housing options to ensure that there was a greater focus on prevention work. We found that homelessness officers generally received training on housing options service delivery, but that was not always the case for initial reception staff, who are sometimes the first person that someone approaching the council would see. Housing options practitioners were also making use of the Scottish Governments or the Scottish Government-funded housing option hubs. Those hubs bring practitioners together to share good practice and to develop new ideas for delivering housing options. Local authorities were making use of those hubs to develop new approaches and share approaches that they found had worked in their authorities, but there was certainly a range of methods and approaches. It is good to hear about that range of methods and how they have been used to tackle homelessness. The report identified a lack of clear and consistently applied recording of outcomes in housing options, which has been a major barrier to evaluating the success of the approach both locally and nationally. Are you able to give us any details on where you felt the inadequacy was in the reporting of those outcomes and how it affected the ability you had to carry out the study and where improvements could be made so that the list of measures that you mentioned could be properly monitored to see which have been most effective? Absolutely. We certainly found that the lack of that national set of statistics around the outcomes achieved through housing options placed a limitation on the type of analysis that we could carry out. There was a lack of clear and consistently applied recording of outcomes in housing options and that has been a major barrier in being able to evaluate the success or effectiveness of the approach both locally and nationally. We certainly found that local authorities were implementing their own approaches to recording their own local outcomes. Again, there was variation in how that was being done, so we could not see consistency even across local methods of recording outcomes. The local authorities that we spoke to recognised that their monitoring of outcomes was an area where they needed to improve. They also recognised that there was a vacuum there in terms of a national monitoring framework that they could contribute to. However, what has happened since we were on site and since we were looking at this was that the Scottish Government on 1 April introduced a mandatory data collection on monitoring housing options outcomes. That is effective from 1 April, because we recognise that it is a really important and timely development. It will now support the proper evaluation of the effectiveness of housing options. That is a really important development. I want to follow in the questions around options and reporting and guidance. Your report has identified attention between local authority duties to homeless persons and housing options. The Scottish Government has produced guidance that makes it clear that local authorities should complete a homeless assessment for any person who is homeless or threatened with homelessness at the time of the options interview. I want to explore a bit further about why the advice was not always being followed. What we found when we were on site was that there was that awareness of the high-level guidance that had been provided back in 2009 through a joint publication by the Scottish Government and COSLA. However, it was a fairly high-level statement that was provided. There was little further detail on how the development of housing options should accommodate the requirements of the homelessness legislation. The Scottish Government actively promoted local development approaches to ensure that there was innovation and that those approaches were relevant to the local context. What we found was that officers on the ground, although they were aware of the high-level objective, were not always clear on what that meant when somebody approached them, whether they should pursue a housing options approach or take them down the route of a homelessness application. It was that confusion that led to variation in practice. Around half of all local authorities have said that there is a need for more guidance. Shelter has asserted that the absence of national guidance in housing options has resulted in a gap in areas. Do you think that putting guidance on a national mandatory footing would close that gap? Yes. It is important that there is clear guidance and an effective monitoring framework. My colleague has said that we now have half of that in place with the introduction of the monitoring framework by the Scottish Government on 1 April. Given what we have found in terms of the variation in local authorities and across local authorities, there is a need for clearer guidance. We are also very mindful of the fact that the code of guidance on homelessness, which is the broader set of guidance available to local authorities to assist them in the delivery of their homelessness duties, has not been updated meaningfully since 2005. I think that there is a real opportunity here to put in place clear guidance that will assist local authorities to deliver effective housing options and effective housing options that enables them to appropriately discharge their statutory duties around homelessness. If a review was done on the 2005 guidance and it was updated, that would make a big difference? Again, that would be for the Scottish Government in discussion with COSLA and Alaccio as to whether that was the best vehicle to get appropriate guidance for housing options. It seems to us sensible that there is an eye given to the broader homelessness guidance when you are bringing forward specific guidance around housing options and how it relates to those homelessness statutory duties. Are you able to comment on the specific impact that the removal of the priority, non-priority need distinction between homeless applicants has had on local authority practice towards potentially homeless people? The inquiry that you undertook was specifically aimed at identifying the impact of housing options on prevention of homelessness. The prevention of homelessness was seen as an important way to address the delivery of the 2012 target around the removal of non-priority for homeless people. The target in terms of the published statistics and the Scottish Government's position on that is that that has been an important factor in achieving the target. We found that there were on a number of occasions individuals who were dealt with through housing options who had a fairly clear prima facie evidence of homelessness and a homelessness assessment was not taken. They may have achieved an outcome that was appropriate and dealt with their housing need, but that is why we have made the statement in the report that we did identify a level of under-reporting of homelessness as a consequence of local authorities dealing with people through the housing options route. Alex Rowley I will move on to looking at some practical examples of that. In the first instance, can you give us some good examples of practice and housing options that led to positive outcomes for people? Alex Rowley We did find some good positive practice examples, which are highlighted in the report. We saw good early intervention work to prevent homelessness, particularly in cases involving people with private sector tenancies and those who owned their own homes. Local authorities were able to offer advice, make referrals to other agencies, including the local authorities own benefits service and to mortgage to rent schemes for owners who are in financial difficulties. We specifically highlighted one of the positive practice examples, Falkirk Council, which uses its debt and welfare advice team to work with owner occupiers in mortgage areas and threatened with eviction as a result of that. It uses the Scottish Government's mortgage to rent scheme to convert mortgages to rent. That has prevented an eviction and prevented homelessness from taking place. We also saw that some people got settled accommodation outcomes that they were satisfied with through housing options, either a local authority house or a registered social landlord's house, led through the mainstream housing list or a house in the private sector. For many of them, that was a positive outcome. We saw good examples of housing options in practice, having the right sort of effect in terms of an appropriate outcome. Alex Rowley There must have been some less positive outcomes that you came across. I wonder if you could tell us about some of those examples, and how those outcomes could have been improved? Certainly, some people did not get solutions to their housing problems and did not get the type of positive outcome that they might have achieved if they had received a homelessness assessment. Were local authorities to carry out an assessment of homelessness and housing options together, which is what was recommended in the 2009 Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, that would have resolved the weaknesses in many of the cases that we reviewed? Alex Rowley I am also interested to know what role you registered social landlords playing the housing options approach, and how can they achieve good outcomes for people? Alex Rowley In this thematic, we focussed particularly on local authorities and their role in relation to housing options and homelessness prevention. We have statistics on RSL's role and their contribution, and we know that they are contributing 37 per cent of social sector housing outcomes for homeless applicants. Most recently, the figures for the final quarter of 2013 equated to approximately 1,500 RSL tenancies compared to 2,500 local authority tenancies. On the basis of your experience in preparing that report, you have recommended that the Scottish Government should produce further guidance on housing options. What are the key issues that you think that guidance should cover? Alex Rowley I think that the principal issue that we recommend that it recovers is the provision of advice to local authorities on how they can deliver housing options services and meet their statutory duties around homelessness. I think that it is about removing the lack of clarity on how those two things can effectively operate side by side. Within our report, we set out a range of other recommendations that we think can be tackled through the provision of clear guidance, but I would say that that is the critical one. That is certainly the one that over half of local authorities stated to us that they felt that there was a need for much greater clarity on that. I follow up on that. You said that it was mainly councils and their council housing rather than registered social landlords playing a part. If we take Glasgow, for example, it does not have its own housing. It is all registered social landlords. In that particular case, is there a particular problem? I recall a few months ago an article saying that Glasgow was not meeting its obligations to homelessness. I do not believe everything I read in the paper, but is that perhaps the case there? Specifically, with regard to Glasgow, we have been engaging with the city council around its acknowledged difficulties in delivering appropriate temporary accommodation and another accommodation for potentially homeless people. The council has committed to making the improvements that it needs to do. It has put in place interim measures to deal with those difficulties, while it implements a longer-term, sustainable set of improvements to its homeless service to ensure that those difficulties are addressed. Has the council got accommodation or does it still rely on social landlords? It has a mix. It has arrangements in place with social landlords, the RSLs, within the city, with other landlords, and it has access to other accommodation, which makes use of temporary accommodation purposes as well. The report highlights that there has been a general decrease in the use of temporary accommodation from its peak in 2010-11 of 11,264 households. I understand that the final quarter of 2013 suggests that that number is down to 9963. Given that there is a range of reasons why people are provided with temporary accommodation, are they able to identify the underlying reason for this 11 per cent reduction over this period? We observed and were aware of that downward trend in the use of temporary accommodation by local authorities. We were not seeing effective strategic planning by local authorities around the level of temporary accommodation that was required. We found that some local authorities had reduced the provision of their own properties for temporary accommodation. We were not necessarily seeing the links between that reduction and the planning requirements around the need for temporary accommodation. It was not always clear how those decisions were relating to the level of demand for temporary accommodation that was fed through into reducing the actual level of temporary accommodation. For some local authorities, this is reducing the availability and choice of temporary accommodation and it may make it more difficult to meet the needs of people in the future. There are also differences between local authorities about the provision of temporary accommodation to people who they had assessed as homeless and those who they were taken through the housing options route. Does that suggest that there is no evidence to suggest that assessments have been done quicker than before, or that settled accommodation has not been found quicker, or that there is less intentionally homeless? From what you are saying, there may not be providing enough temporary accommodation. What we are saying is that there was not that clear evidence of strong effect of planning for the provision of temporary accommodation based on a clear understanding and assessment of the level of need and demand. It is probably worth saying that the reductions in the level of usage of temporary accommodation do to a degree mirror the reduction in the number of applications that are being dealt with by local authorities. You could conclude that there is a logic in that mirroring. It is undoubtedly the case that, if you are effective at preventing homelessness, you will reduce the level of need and demand for temporary accommodation. What we have identified through the report is that there is some evidence that some of that reduction might be because people are being diverted from the homelessness application route into the housing options route and therefore temporary accommodation is not being made available, where perhaps it would have been required. Ultimately, irregardless of what route they go down, they are being found accommodation? Not everyone is being found accommodation, as my colleague said earlier. Some of the outcomes that were achieved through housing options were less favourable and probably less favourable than they would have been had the person being dealt with through the homelessness statutory framework. I think that it would be correct to say that the outcomes were not always what they should have been for every individual that was dealt with through housing options. Are there any findings that you had in your report that would improve the use of temporary accommodation? As my colleague has said, the focus of the inquiry was very much around the operation of housing options. We touched on temporary accommodation as far as it related to housing options and the provision of it. We have not made direct recommendations in terms of temporary accommodation in itself. We engage with local authorities on an individual basis through the shared risk assessment process that we undertake with our scrutiny partners such as Audit Scotland. Through that, where we identify a requirement in a local authority for improvements around temporary accommodation, we will pick that up in direct engagement with that local authority. Are there any steps that you are taking to monitor the quality of temporary accommodation that is provided by local authorities? We look at those figures as part of the shared risk assessment when we annually look at local authorities' performance in terms of their duties and their responsibilities. We also make use of the Scottish Government's statistics that it gathers through its returns from local authorities, and that includes temporary accommodation figures as well. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Following on from my colleagues' questions on temporary accommodation, the foundation of your important function as the housing regulator is the Scottish social housing charter. One of the outcomes in that states that local councils perform their duties on homelessness so that homeless people get prompt and easy access to help and advice are provided with suitable good quality temporary or emergency accommodation when that is needed. How do you measure whether or not the accommodation that is being provided by local authorities is good quality? You will be aware of the evidence from Shelter Scotland that, despite the significant decrease in the number of families being placed in temporary bed and breakfast accommodations since the legislation was introduced in 2004, there is still a small number of families, particularly pregnant women and children being placed in accommodation that is not wind and water type. How do you measure the quality in order to meet the outcome specified in your own charter? It is probably worth saying that we have just concluded the collection of the first round of performance information on the social housing charter. Landlords were required to provide that information by the end of May. We will now be analysing that information and reporting that back out to tenants and to the wider public. We are aiming to do that by the end of August. That will be the first time that we have had a comprehensive dataset on landlords' performance against the charter. What we will then do with that information is to use that, along with a range of other information and intelligence that we gather through the shared risk assessment to identify which local authorities we may need to engage further with to understand better how they are performing. In terms of temporary accommodation and the quality of that accommodation, the reality is that the only really effective approach to assessing that quality is direct inspection. We would undertake that where we have identified that there may be a risk that local authorities are failing to deliver on the quality. We will take account of a range of different information that comes our way to ensure that we understand where that risk is. There will be a range of activity that will flow out of our shared risk assessment process. It may very well include engaging with a number of local authorities around the quality of the temporary accommodation that they are providing. Have you had any discussions with Shelter Scotland on the specific issue of temporary accommodation? We have fairly regular conversations with Shelter both at a strategic level and when we are engaging directly with a particular local authority, we would view Shelter as an important stakeholder. A useful source of intelligence in terms of the work that Shelter does on the ground through a range of its projects and its housing advice centres. We have had a range of conversations with Shelter on those kinds of topics. On the face of it, I was concerned to read about what appeared to be an inappropriate diversion of people away from the provision of homelessness service to the housing options approach. My understanding was that under the regulations, local authorities had a housing support duty that requires local authorities to assess where appropriate the housing support needs of homeless applicants to whom they have a duty to secure settled accommodation. Why was this not kicking in when people who were to all intents and purposes as you pointed out yourself were homeless? It is important to understand the different assessment routes that local authorities are considering. The duty around support needs is relatively new, introduced in the summer of last year. We saw some good examples of local authorities ensuring that the support needs of individuals approaching them were being fully assessed and that appropriate responses were being put in place. The difficulty arose here where local authorities were making decisions about whether an individual was dealt with as a homeless person or through the housing options route and where it was through the housing options route. It was not always clear that the requirements around the assessment of support needs would kick in and that that would happen. I think that this comes back to the point that we made earlier and our recommendation around clear guidance to ensure that local authorities understand and are assisted to provide the appropriate assessments at the appropriate point for each individual that approaches them. Was this a consistent finding across the country you had or were some local authorities doing the appropriate thing and others were not? Was that what you were saying? Was that because of the lack of clarity in the guidance? It was not a consistent finding. We found in a number of councils that they were doing very effectively joint assessments around homelessness, housing options and support needs that all of those assessments were happening. At the same point, we highlight within the report one council for example that it ensured that, in every case, the support needs assessment was happening for all individuals. It is certainly not a consistency issue. That brings us back to the point of clarity to ensure that that consistency is there across all local authorities. That is our best practice that you mentioned. That is what we are aiming for across the country and every local authority. We have certainly highlighted it as positive practice in the report. You have highlighted in your report the fact that there are no national available statistics on the outcomes that people achieve through housing options and you state in page 13 of your report that the lack of clear and consistently applied recording of outcomes in housing options has been a major barrier to evaluating the success of the approach, both locally and nationally. How important is it that we are now moving towards mandatory data collection and what difference do you think that that will make? I think that it will give policy makers and stakeholders real evidence about how housing options have been delivered in practice. It will allow the policy to be evaluated based on statistical information that is collecting details of who is applied, household characteristics, reasons for application, prevention activity and the very important outcome. That will give a real set of important evidence about housing options and allow a real national evaluation of its implementation. At the moment, I think that one of the things is that there is inconsistency in the approach undertaken by different local authorities. Do you see that improving? I think that with both the monitoring framework and what is potentially going to be developed by the Scottish Government and others in terms of national guidance, those are the two things clearly came out of our thematic inquiry as the things that were needed. One of those is in place and will start to deliver the statistical information. We have a commitment from the Scottish Government and local council bodies on developing the national guidance. Those two things will make a real difference to how local authorities consistently deliver housing options in an effective way. The mandatory requirement has been introduced from April of this year. Do we have guidance yet to accompany that? There are guidance around what statistics need to be provided for that new monitoring framework so that that should be collected consistently and provide and submitted in a consistent fashion. The guidance is about how housing options should be delivered and how that is done on the front line by staff in different local authorities. That is a thing that is still to be developed, but we have very positive commitments from Scottish Government and local authority bodies to do that. In fact, we are aware of early progress being made to develop that guidance. That distinction and clarification are useful and helpful. I will ask you about your monitoring work as the regulator. How do you see that tying in with the new requirements, particularly in relation to the charter and those indicators that relate specifically to homelessness and housing advice? We are just in the first year of the charter. We have got the information submitted to us for last year, as of 1 June, which we are in the process of analysing. We also rely on statistics that are collected by the Scottish Government from local authorities. We will use those statistics to review local authority performance against the charter outcomes. That will feed into the shared risk assessment process for each local authority. That will give us what our regulatory priorities are to focus on for individual local authorities in the coming year. You said that, in undertaking the inquiry, you had feedback from discussions with a range of stakeholders. Were some of those stakeholders people who had pitched up at their local council saying that they were homeless and how they felt they had been dealt with and how their problem had been dealt with through the housing options route, rather than traditionally might have expected? The stakeholders that we are referring to in the report were stakeholders' representative bodies, such as their shelter and similar bodies. As part of our case studies, we observed interviews within local authorities where homeless people or people who were saying that they were potentially homeless were being interviewed and spoken to by the council. We had direct evidence from people who were approaching the councils and going through the council's housing options or homelessness assessment route. Does anyone else have any further questions? Thank you very much for being with us this morning. That's been very helpful. Thank you for your attendance. At this point, we move into private session, as previously agreed, but can have a short couple of minutes break.