Chamber and committees

Good morning, panel. I will aim this question at Michael Cameron to start with. Can you provide an overview of why you think that there is a systemic failure in homelessness services in some councils? Why are some homeless people not being offered temporary accommodation when they should be? How can homeless people ensure that their rights are enforced? I appreciate that there is a lot there, but perhaps you can unpack some of that for us.

Without being too Edinburgh-centric—although it is clearly the most important place in Scotland—I have a question for Gordon MacRae or Nicky Brown. We have had the rent freeze in the city for almost a year now, but we have also seen rents increasing when people leave their flats. Is that having an effect on homelessness in the city? Are you noticing anything? Is that just an Edinburgh issue or is it happening in other parts of Scotland?

Nicky, do you have anything to add?

Maybe one of the council representatives could answer this question to start with. In addition to resources through the local government settlement this financial year, the Scottish Government has provided £8 million to councils to implement the rapid rehousing transition plans, and it is providing an additional £2 million to implement partnership plans with the councils that are facing the greatest pressure. How is that funding being used and how can its impact be maximised?

That would be great. Thank you.

Yes.

Okay.

I suspect that you will probably need to write to us on the next area that I want to ask about. Another change that we were going to make was to have much less requirement to have individuals come in to be assessed medically. What percentage of people who make a new application or have been transferred from personal independence payment are now being examined?

From the figures, I think that there were 350,000 cases in total to be transferred from the DWP to Social Security Scotland. I declare at this point that I am on personal independence payment and am waiting to be transferred. My understanding from your figures is that 74,785 cases have been completed, which leaves 275,000 roughly to be completed by the end of next year. From my basic arithmetic, that means you will have to transfer 13,750 cases a month to reach that target. Will you do it?

I will be very quick.

I want to go back to a previous issue that I was interested in but that we moved on quite quickly from—your client surveys. We, as MSPs, get only the bad news, and Twitter is perhaps not the best place to look at what is happening. How do you decide who gets to fill out an assessment of how you did? Is it a random selection? Obviously, your figures are very high with regard to people being very pleased with your services, but how do you choose people to fill out the forms?

Okay. Thank you.