Chamber and committees

Priorities for Session 6 - Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers ALACHO - 1 July 2021

Thank you for your letter of 1 July seeking our views on priorities for the committee’s work including issues around recovery from the pandemic and the budget. First of all, we’d like to congratulate you on your appointment as convenor, and, if we may, extend our congratulation to Elena Whitham on her appointment as your Deputy Convenor. We look forward to working with you both and the committee over this parliamentary term.

In your letter you ask for our views on a wide range of issues including our priorities within the committee’s remit, the financial implications for local government and
about innovative practice that could be retained through the pandemic recovery process.

On the big picture issues our view is that Housing to 2040 provides the basic framing of the housing challenges that we will face over the next 20 years. The pandemic hasn’t changed any of these though it has highlighted how important housing is to household and community resilience and wellbeing and the extent to which bad or insecure housing reinforces poor health including poor mental health and other forms of disadvantage.

Recent events have strengthened the case for a focus on housing as a human right. Our own research[1] on this has demonstrated both the complexity of this as an idea
and the extent to which inadequate housing is still a challenge for too many households.

With this in mind we think there are six key areas of challenge where progress will shape our success in realising the right to adequate housing. These are:

Affordability across all tenures;
• The just transition to decarbonisation;
• Supply and access to affordable housing;
• Adaptations and the availability of housing to meet particular needs;
• Tenements and the condition of private housing generally; and
• Improving our data on housing conditions, costs and householder experience of housing across all tenures and geographies.

But across each of these issues there is a pressing need to understand and respond to;
• the rural and island dimension;
• the equalities implications particularly for women (impacted by homelessness and domestic abuse) and young people (on access and quality);
• improving housing options for the Gypsy/Traveller community; and
• on the wider implications for poverty including recognising that most of our poorest households including most of those in fuel poverty are now living in the private sector. 

We would normally have included homelessness as part of this list, but we understand that it isn’t part of the committees remit and will, instead be addressed
through the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. It hardly needs saying that there are strong connections between the issues we have identified here and
the challenges we face in ending homelessness. We hope that the two committees will work closely together to ensure that policy and resourcing approaches across
housing and homelessness are joined up.

You also ask about examples of good or improved practice that have been adopted during the pandemic that should be retained through the recovery period. Locally
landlords are already working with tenants to consider how to reshape services to build on what has worked during the pandemic. The full extent of these changes
aren’t yet clear but it is likely that landlords will look to work with tenants to continue using technology to improve access to services including advice and support; to
build on improved joint working with health and social care colleagues and improved responses to those at risk of homelessness.

At a national level we would suggest the following:

• the introduction of “pre action requirements” into the possession process for private rented properties;
• the switch to “discretionary” rather than “mandatory” possession grounds in the PRS though we would also suggest that a number of the grounds included
in the 2016 Act should be considered for abolition as part of a review of the act;
• the improved engagement between the Scottish Government and representative organisations working in housing through the resilience groups though we think it is now time to rationalise these groups and reduce them from three to one; and
• the additional funding for emergency accommodation and support for those at risk of sleeping rough, the availability of this money has enabled councils to work with the voluntary sector to ensure that almost no one is sleeping on our streets. Discussions around the implementation of the revised Unsuitable
Accommodation Order have demonstrated that if we wish to build on this success this additional funding will be required for some time to come.

You also ask about the implications for local authority budgets. Some of the issues we have identified will impact more on Council and RSL rents rather than wider council budgets. There are strong links in the social sector between rent affordability, housing standards, investment requirements and the availability of government support to meet particular policy objective. With that in mind our main concerns around this are that:
• the resources available to support the Affordable Housing Supply Programme may not be adequate to meet the Scottish Government’s aspiration for Councils and RSLs to deliver 100,000 affordable homes, including 70,000 for social rent over the next ten years within affordable rents;
• the full impact and cost of decarbonisation of social housing isn’t yet properly understood and is likely to add to the pressure to increase rents;
• the funding for adaptations is tenure based rather that client or outcome focused and is one of a number of factors that is holding back improvements in this area; and
• the resources available to support the effective regulation of the private rented sector including letting agents are inadequate and there is a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of the system overall.

ALACHO members would be very happy to help your committee gather evidence around these issues and to offer our advice on the policy options for addressing
them. In any event we look forward to working with you as and when the opportunity arises.

[1] http://alacho.org/what-we-do/reports/