 The 28th meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, and ... there we go, hopefully, that's the only issue we have this morning. Apologies have been received from Elina Whithom, and I would also like to congratulate Elina on her appointment as community safety minister and thank her for all the work on the committee. I welcome Evelyn Tweet, who will be attending as a substitute this morning. Our first item of business today is a decision to take item 4 in private. Are we all We now turn to our main item of business this morning. Item 2 is the consideration of a statutory instrument, the Homelessaggio's Suspension of Raferials between local authorities's Scotland Order 2022 draft. The Scottish Government advises that that order would suspend the discretionary power of local authorities to refer a homelessness applicant without a local connection to another local authority based on the ar y plwydiadau lleol o'r cwestiynau gloedd yng Nghymru. I welcome, Shona Robison MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. Cabinet Secretary, thank you for attending today. I welcome officials joining us today, Karen Greave, legislation and programme strategy team leader, Louise Thomson, homelessness policy manager and Mikayla West, solicitor housing branch Scottish Government. I hope I got your name right there. The instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before it comes into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. I remind everyone that Scottish Government officials can speak under this item, but not in the debate that follows. I now invite the Cabinet Secretary to make a short opening statement. Good morning and thanks, convener and members of the committee, for the invitation to today's session. The proposed change to local connection referrals between local authorities in Scotland was a recommendation made in 2002 by the homelessness task force and picked up again in 2018 by the homelessness and rough sleeping action group. In short, local connection has been recognised as a barrier to accessing homelessness services in Scotland for two decades, and now we are removing it. We made changes in late 2019 so that investigating local connection became a discretionary power rather than a legal duty for local authorities. That means that at the moment households can still be asked to demonstrate their local connection to the area when they present as homeless to a local authority. Most homeless households want to live in an area where they are already settled within their community. However, for some households, application of the local connection test is a barrier to securing a settled home. Choice is important, and homeless households should be able to freely move to a new area like anyone else. That could be to access support, to take advantage of employment opportunities or simply to have a fresh start. The number of households who present as homeless with no local connection to the local authority is low. Currently, around 5 per cent of all households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness. When there is no local connection established, local authorities have the power to refer the homeless household back to the area where they do have a local connection. However, local authorities seldom use the referral powers, which suggest that they are already operating in a person-centred way following the legislative change in 2019. Our 2019 consultation showed that there is broad support for the changes to local connection from homeless and stakeholders, local authorities and our lived experience group, the change team. However, we know that some local authorities have raised concerns as to the timing of laying the legislation, as they are under pressure to deliver their homelessness duties. Big cities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh are seen as attractive places to live, with a wide range of support services and employment opportunities available. Our island communities are also concerned that even a small increase in homeless households can have a significant impact on support services such as health and social care. A robust monitoring and evaluation framework has been developed with stakeholders and, through regular engagement with local authorities and services, we can capture trends as they emerge. That will provide the evidence base for mitigations should a disproportionate adverse effect on local authorities be identified. From my previous correspondence with the committee, we have delayed the SSI a number of times to support local authorities, but we are determined to improve access to housing and support for homeless households, so we are moving forward with those changes now. Finally, our safety, stability and support are all affected by where people live. I see the ending of local connection referrals in Scotland as an important step in removing barriers experienced by homeless households, making sure that households receive a consistent service and offering them opportunities available to other Scottish households. We will now move on to questions. Our questions will be directed to you, but you are obviously, of course, welcome to invite any official to respond. I will open up the questions this morning with quite a general one. I would be grateful if the cabinet secretary could expand on why the Scottish Government believes that this is the right approach. To start with the fact that Scotland has some of the strongest rights in the world for people experiencing homelessness, but at the moment, as local connection powers are discretionary, there is a risk of inconsistent practice across the country. That can result in some homeless households receiving a different service in one area compared to another. Ending the referral powers will result in, I suppose, a more consistent service across Scotland for homeless households. When people make a homelessness application in another local authority, they will have good reasons for doing so. As I said in my opening statement, that might be to be closer to family or a job opportunity, or they might want to use services that are not available in their area or, indeed, a fresh start because they did not feel safe in their previous home. We have listened to people's experiences and we have built on the basis of listening to those experiences. Changing the rules on local connection has been a long-standing commitment. It is not something that has just come to light recently. It has been informed by experts in the homelessness sector. As I said in my opening statement, the bones of that go back as far as 2002, when that was first raised. We have delayed, but we feel now is the right time to move forward with that. I will now move on to questions from members. I will bring my colleague Emma Roddick in. The cabinet secretary touched on that in her opening statement. There have been concerns raised by some local authorities with very specific housing issues around how they might be able to cope with aspirational applications and presentations for homelessness. For example, the Highlands and Islands, which is a great place to live. There may be people who present that are not realising the geography and that, if they are allocated a house in Caithness, they might be a good few hours away from the support services that they thought they would be closer to. The cabinet secretary touched on monitoring. Could she expand on how situations like that will be recorded and monitored so that the committee can scrutinise them in future? I am happy to do so. First of all, in terms of the context, I said in my opening statement that there was about 5 per cent of households that did not have a local connection to the local authority that they presented to. Less than 200 referrals last year and 11 councils did not make any referrals and 13 had made five or fewer referrals. We are not talking about huge numbers of people and huge increases. However, having said that, we recognise that we have to absolutely monitor and observe and keep an eye on any trends. First of all, we did complete an island community impact assessment with engagement from each of the six island local authorities, and we, the island and rural local authorities, made sure that we were listening to their issues that Emma Roddick has just articulated. The monitoring and reporting framework has been developed in collaboration with them, with front-line services and with those with lived experience to capture relevant information to support the data that is already gathered through HL1. Monitoring and statistics will be an important way of understanding the impact of the legislation. If there are any indications of difficulties, we will directly engage with the local authority to look at how we support them. I guess that the backstop would be if there is an emergency situation created in an area. There is the potential to come forward with an exemption, which would require me to come back to Parliament with that. I would really only want to do that in extremes and I do not anticipate that needing to be done, because I think that local authorities will manage the situation and, with our support, I think that we will be able to help them to address any additional applications that come in. I would be happy to come back to the committee, perhaps, after a period of time of implementation with an update report, if that would be helpful, to give the committee further information at that point. I thank the cabinet secretary for the detailed answer. I am glad to hear about engagement with folk with lived experience, particularly in the islands. Could she expand a little more on the wider engagement that was done with lived experience groups? The change team who sits around the table at the homelessness strategic group that I attend has been absolutely fantastic at ensuring that all measures and developments within homelessness policy services legislation are checked for those who have lived experience. The change team has drawn a huge number of people with varied experience of accessing homelessness services. The input is absolutely critical to ensure that any changes that are made or any issues that we need to address further are identified and highlighted by those with lived experience. I would certainly encourage the committee, if they have not already, to engage with the change team, because they are an amazing group of people. I will now move to questions from Evelyn Tweed. Shelter Scotland warmly welcomes the change and states that it will embed the no wrong door approach. It also welcomes a person-centred approach. Would the cabinet secretary like to comment further on the Shelter briefing? I certainly welcome the support and statement that was shared with the committee by Shelter Scotland, which recognises that it is an important step in improving outcomes for homeless households and giving those households the same ability to move as any other household would have. I know that Shelter does advocate on the behalf of the rights of people experiencing homelessness, and they see that as a strong step in the right direction of supporting a person's right to choose where they live. They have been advocating for that for quite some time. As I said, our content that we have now brought forward after having delayed for a good reason because of Covid and because of Ukraine, but we feel now that it is the right time to move forward and to delay any further would not be right. I think that we all understand the rationale for the legislation and by and large support it. As an Edinburgh MSP, I have my concerns where we are in the capital with the availability, and I think that Glasgow members would have the same of homelessness accommodation. I wanted to ask what impact assessment and potential additional support services and also homeless accommodation will be needed and what work has been undertaken around that for potential referrals to the capital and other cities. Let me go back to the numbers that are relatively small. In the latest figures, we have 2021-22, Edinburgh made 10 referrals and Glasgow made 20. I am not minimising that, but I think that we need to see it in some context of the overall number of applications, so they are relatively small. I am aware, obviously, that there are pressures within Glasgow and Edinburgh. I have engaged very directly with the housing conveners of both cities. We need to see the solutions as part of the wider housing system. They are not the same in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They both have different challenges. I have reiterated that in a letter that I issued yesterday to them that I am keen to work with both. Those other local authorities that have, for example, the highest number of people in temporary accommodation, to look at what solutions they can bring forward because they know their local areas better than I do and how we can support them with those solutions. I have offered to look favourably at solutions that can be brought forward with some evidence of how that will impact on resolving and reducing the number of people in temporary accommodation and helping to reduce homelessness within both cities more generally. The monitoring framework will, of course, be important in monitoring any impact on Glasgow, Edinburgh or anywhere else for that matter. We will continue to engage with them. However, I cannot stress enough how open I have been with them to come forward with solutions that they think can make the difference. I look forward to engaging with them further on that. Can I ask if the council has expressed concern to you on the issue as well? I have raised with you several times the issue around IJB funding, which has meant that the capital is lost out on resources, so we are not in a great place in the first place here in the capital. I just wondered if those concerns have already been put to you. There are mixed views within local authorities, it is fair to say, and some have, but others do not. There is not a consistent view across local authorities. Clearly, within the homelessness sector and experts, they are very clear that this is the right thing to do. It is not that those local authorities raised any concerns and said that they should not do it. It was more about the timing. I listened to that in terms of Covid and Ukraine, and that is why we are delayed to the frustration of some of the homeless and the stakeholders. Those things are always a balance. I feel that it is not right to be raised 20 years on from the first being that we do not move forward with that, but what I have said is that we will monitor any impact and we will work with those individual local authorities to help to overcome any issues. As I have started off with my comments, I have said very clearly to particularly Edinburgh and Glasgow that my door is open and I am keen to hear and receive proposals of how we can help to help them move forward with some of the particular challenges that they have, and that is continued to be the case. I will move on to questions from Jeremy Balfour. Good morning Cabinet Secretary and good morning to your team. I wonder if I can just fill up a couple of questions for my colleague, Miles Briggs. I do not want to keep this Edinburgh centric, but most people within Edinburgh, if they are in temporary accommodation, are there for two years. Can I just see clarification? If somebody makes an application, do they go on to that temporary accommodation list, or do they jump the list and go straight to find accommodation, which is obviously very scarce within Edinburgh? I will bring officials in, but obviously it would depend on their circumstances, so their homelessness application would be assessed in terms of the needs, as would any homelessness application. I do not know, Louise. Do you want to say a little bit more? I think I would echo what the cabinet secretary had said there. The application would be treated as any other applicant, the difference being that their local connections status is not taken into account. Okay, so have we worked out? I appreciate the numbers relatively are very low, but if you are waiting two years for a permanent house, that can be a very long time to wait in temporary accommodation. Off the people who you have looked at previously, how many of those would go into temporary accommodation and how many would go straight into a more permanent place? Do we have those figures? I think that those would be the figures that Edinburgh would have because it will change depending on the availability of accommodation at the time. Not everybody who requires accommodation in Edinburgh goes into temporary accommodation. It will depend on their circumstances, the availability of properties to meet their needs. We know, for example, that one of the reasons that families are ending up in temporary accommodation is quite often because there is not an available, suitable home to meet their needs. Obviously, it is about matching the needs of the person with the accommodation available. I would stress that Edinburgh made 10 referrals in 2021-22, so the figures are small. Having said that, I am not going to underestimate the challenge that Edinburgh has with temporary accommodation, which is why looking at it from that lens is not really the local connection that is the issue for Edinburgh. It is the number of people and the availability of stock and the numbers therefore going into temporary accommodation because they cannot be matched with a home that meets their needs. That is where we need to resolve the problem. I cannot stress enough that we need to think a little bit outside the box. For example, one of the opportunities of some of the quite imaginative thinking that is going on around the Ukraine programme is to look at either more innovative solutions around modular build that has been raised in the chamber during the Ukraine statement. Are there sites available to perhaps do some more rapid development of housing that may have more general application beyond the Ukraine programme? We really need to think about imaginative solutions. I have opened the offer. The offer is there on the table to Edinburgh and the other areas that I have a particular problem with housing availability and temporary accommodation to come forward with ideas, and we will help to make those happen. I think that we need to look at the whole housing system in Edinburgh rather than the local connection. It is not really the issue for Edinburgh here. It is more the housing system in Edinburgh that we need to get into more of a balance. On a more general point, if I read the regulations right, this is a suspension rather than a removal. I wonder why you have gone down that road. How long do you intend the suspension to last? Is that because you want to do a further review of this like a suspension when, 20 years time, people will forget that it has been a suspension? We have used the language of suspension because it is a suspension specific to Scottish local authorities and referrals between Scottish local authorities. We have kept in place in the provision the ability to refer elsewhere. The language of suspension is just specific to that specific local authority. If I live in Blackpool or wherever down in England and have a local connection with, say, Inverness, that does not apply to me, does it? If I live out with Scotland local authorities, even if I have a strong connection with the local authority area, I cannot use that. Is that right? There is alternative legislation in England and in Wales that deals with the same thing, with referrals between local authorities across England and Wales in Scotland. If you were to present to an English local authority and have a connection in Scotland, you might be referred to their discretion back up, although I cannot completely talk to the English legislation. Does that answer your question? I think so, yes. I am not quite sure why we have gone down the road of suspension rather than removal. I did not quite understand the answer. When you give me a label, it is slightly further on that. Why not just remove this completely? Well, because the suspension is within the 32 local authorities in Scotland, so it still leaves the power in relation to someone from a local authority out with Scotland. That is helpful. My final question is, one of the issues that we have been grappling with as a committee is data collection around all areas. You said that in your opening statement, but I wonder if you could just give us some kind of expansion in regard to how is the data collected and monitored, and will that be published in a public way so that we can see how this is working over a three or five-year period? I will bring officials in the detail, but some of that data is already collected, and this is about adding information on top of the information that is already there in terms of the monitoring and evaluation framework. Louie Sturgeon? Local authorities already give us regular data returns, which are published on an annual basis. The statistical side of things that we have already been capturing, we do not want to duplicate that, so we will use that existing data. The part that is being developed with local authorities, the change team and front-line services is much more around the qualitative side of information, really trying to capture the impact of what this legislation will have. That will be gathered through regular engagement with our stakeholders, local authorities and our lived experience group, and that will be published as well. I will now move to questions from Pam Duncan-Glancy, who will finish off our question today. Thank you, deputy convener. Good morning to the cabinet secretary and their officials. I wanted to pick up on a couple of the themes that we have heard so far this morning. Since 2019, in Glasgow, the unsuitable accommodation order has been breached 220 times. I wonder whether or not this is something that you are going to monitor as a result of bringing in this suspension. Yes, we monitor very closely the breaches, because I am concerned at any breaches, so we monitor the unsuitable accommodation order breaches. That will be part of the package of information that we will look at here. I will go back to one of my previous answers that we need to look at the housing system as a whole to address, because we can address some of the issues around temporary accommodation. We can then tackle the unsuitable accommodation orders. Some local authorities are doing some quite imaginative things. One local authority was talking at a recent housing event. I attended that they were getting far more upstream and identifying those households that could potentially end up homeless and in temporary accommodation. They were doing that through looking at, for example, people getting into council tax arrears, as well as rent arrears, and by getting further upstream and helping those families earlier with their debts and arrears. They were actually seeing the homelessness figures come down and those in temporary accommodation come down. There is something about both tackling those presenting as homeless and tackling that issue and obviously making sure that we continue to expand the housing provision and that we look at innovative ways of tackling temporary accommodation. There is also something about prevention. I am keen to look further at how we might get help families at a point before they end up in the homelessness system. That is about drilling down into looking at folk who have ended up in temporary accommodation. What is their story of how did they get there, what happened and what were the opportunities for intervention? I think that the prevention duties that we are bringing forward are going to be important in that respect as well because it is about looking at all of the opportunities to intervene in seeing it as everybody's business to ask the questions about our folk getting into debt, into arrears, homelessness and a potential consequence of that. How can we really prevent that far earlier? I welcome that approach. I can see how that would be more sensible than obviously getting someone into homelessness situation or finding them and dealing with it at that point, so that is really helpful. Have you also considered, we spoke a little bit about Ukraine this morning, have you considered the impact of the people from Ukraine on this particular order? Yes, and obviously we monitor that very carefully. As you will be aware, the housing system around the Ukrainian displaced persons is a bit separate because they have the welcome accommodation and then trying to get them into host accommodation or the opportunities for the private rented sector. There is a lot of work going on and of course the social rented sector, the £50 million that has been made available to local authorities to come forward with new accommodation, as in refurbished, repurposing. We have had a good response from a number of local authorities, the latest one with the 500 units in Aberdeen that are going to be brought forward that were essentially needing refurbishment and had been seen as surplus to requirements, so we are trying to keep that housing stream a bit separate in order to create additional capacity. Obviously, we need to keep a close eye on that because we do not want—let me say this as well—it is really important that the host accommodation opportunity is continued beyond six months. There have been a number of changes in the UK Government around the programme and I know that my colleague Neil Gray has been seeking urgent discussions around making sure that that ability to keep hosts beyond the six months is really, really important because we do not want to see people. I know that English local authorities are really concerned about that as well. We do not want to see people ending up out of host accommodation and then ending up presenting as homeless. That is really important. We do not see that, so making sure that hosts can continue to host, while people are then supported into more settled accommodation, is really, really crucial. All of those things are linked. Thank you. I have just one final question. I appreciate what has been said this morning about monitoring. I think that that will be quite important for this. I should have said at the start that I think that this is a sensible thing to do because I understand that people want to be able to live where they want to live, so I think that that is quite important. In the monitoring, if you were to find that there were particular local authorities that had quite an uptick in applications, possibly as a result of that particular suspension, is there an intention to provide funding to those local authorities to make sure that they can afford to meet the demand? We will look at the circumstances at the time of what interventions have already been made and what further interventions the local authority believes are necessary, but I go back to that wider discussion. We have already been very upfront with Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example, about what you think you need to do to tackle, for example, temporary accommodation issues in Edinburgh, and then we can have a conversation about how that is supported. Obviously, we would want those local authorities to make full use of the allocations that have already been received. For example, in Edinburgh, they have not fully utilised as yet their allocation of the affordable housing supply programme, and we are wanting them to get on with that. I know that they have a few things in the pipeline, but we need to see the full allocation used before any further resources are used. However, I have said that, if Edinburgh or any other local authority, with particular pressures around temporary accommodation, comes to us and says, look, we think that those are the kind of key things that we need to do. We can fund those ourselves, but we need a bit of assistance with that. I would look on that very favourably. The evidence is there. It is going to make a difference, and those are the conversations that we are having. I am sure that local authorities will welcome that. Item 3 is the formal consideration of motion S6M-05955, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the homeless person's suspension of referrals between local authorities Scotland Order 2022. I invite the cabinet secretary to speak and move that motion. I now invite any contributions from members. I will invite the cabinet secretary to sum up and respond to the debate. I think that it has been a very constructive discussion, and a lot of important points have been made. I will come back to the committee at some point in the future with an update on how that is working in practice, if that would be helpful to the committee. Absolutely, that would be very helpful. The question is that motion S6M-05955 in the name of Shona Robinson MSP be approved. Are we all agreed? We are all agreed. That is great. The committee will report on the outcome of this instrument in due course. I invite the committee to delegate authority to me as convener to approve a draft of the report for publication. Thank you, cabinet secretary, and to your officials for coming this morning. Before I close the public part of this meeting, I can advise that next week we will be taking evidence on the Scottish Government's national care service Scotland bill. The committee will now move into private session, and members attending remotely are invited to join the private meeting via the link provided.