East Lothian Courier | News | Council ‘struggles’ to house homeless

Friday, 25th July, 2008

Published: Friday, 30th June, 2006 11:55

Council ‘struggles’ to house homeless

EAST Lothian is failing to meet housing targets for homeless people, councillors have admitted.

This is despite more than half of available council properties going to the homeless – leaving some communities “unbalanced”.

Under existing regulations introduced last June, which gives priority to homeless people, the council is required to ensure that no families or pregnant women are lodged in unsuitable accommodation – such as bed and breakfasts – for any longer than 14 days.

This requirement is laid out in the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order 2004.

The council is judged on a weekly basis but failed to meet its statutory requirments on 47 out of the 52 weeks since last June.

Other than the five weeks when it was successful, there were six other weeks when only one family stayed longer than the permitted 14 day period.

This is set against a backdrop of a rise of 14 per cent in the number of applications for homeless accommodation during 2005/06.

Of 320 housing allocations since July 1 last year, 55.9 per cent have gone to homeless individuals or families.

At a meeting of the council last Tuesday, Councillor Willie Innes, chairman of the social work and housing committee said: “There is no doubt at all that this order has had a significant and detrimental impact on the county and we have struggled to be compliant with it.”

He said there were 47 weeks in the year where the council was not compliant with the order.

At present around 70 per cent of three apartment properties are going to homeless families and the communities were becoming unbalanced, he added.

Councillors agreed to contact the Executive to ask for the order to be reviewed in the county.

“We need to set out a special case and call for a relaxation of the order for East Lothian,” he added.

And he asked for another report on the situation to be presented to the council after the summer recess.

Members agreed to continue monitoring the situation and write to the Executive.

The lack of available land for affordable housing in East Lothian was also proving to be a significant hurdle.

The council discussed the progress made with the Local Housing Strategy (LHS) Action Plan which was reviewed at the end of last year.

The aim of building 2,750 new affordable houses in the county by 2013 was not meeting its targets because of the lack of land.

But Mr Innes said several meetings had taken place with representatives from the housing department and the Executive, as well as county MSP, John Home Robertson to try and address this.

Councillor David Berry described the situation as “alarming” as little progress had been made, but the number of homeless accommodation applications continued to rise.

He asked: “I recognise there is a problem, but when do you start to turn around the statistics?”

Mr Innes replied that a local plan had to be in place before strategic sites could be identified.

He said there was a lack of affordable housing for rent and that was why the council were contacting the Executive to “try to influence the planning bill”.

“It is not a success story, and we do hold all the cards in our hand, but we are doing everything we can.”

The council agreed to approve the revised LHS Action Plan.

Social Bookmarking What are these?