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Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

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Glasgow’s homeless turned away

February 09 2014
Scotland’s housing for all target falls flat in Glasgow. Housing Regulator calls for action

The Scottish Housing Regulator has told Glasgow City Council it must urgently address the issue of its non-provision of housing to homeless people, after a report revealed that two thirds of people presenting as homeless to the council were turned away.

Since December 2012 everyone in Scotland has a right to housing.

However, the report from Glasgow Homeless Network (GHN) last September showed that over the preceding three months, 136 people were turned away homeless out of 200 who presented.

The housing regulator has told Glasgow’s authorities to draw up an urgent plan to show how it is going to improve the situation as quickly as possible – though a report published by the council late last month made no mention of a time frame, stating only that the executive director of social care services should update the relevant committee in May 2014.

This is just two months before an international spotlight will shine on the city for the Commonwealth Games 2014.

Most people, GHN said, were turned away just once in the period covered; however, five people made three unsuccessful attempts to get housed, and one person was turned away a staggering 11 times.

On the occasions people were turned away, they ended up sleeping rough more than half the time. Others found places to stay with family or friends, or returned to previous accommodation.

The recent freedom of information request is said by homeless organisations working in Scotland to finally prove ‘in black and white’ the concerns that many have been raising for years. Housing charity Shelter says it has been pressing the council for more than two years – only to be stonewalled with "bureaucracy and managerial speak”. Govan Law Centre is understood to have been dealing with several cases each week of those who have been turned away by the council and have nowhere else to go.

Both charities say they have been forced to threaten to take the local authority to court over the matter several times, with accommodation being found only when charities sought judicial review.

Mhairi McAlpine, a Glaswegian blogger, published a Freedom of Information response in October showing that nearly a quarter of people turning up to Glasgow’s main Community Casework service were being turned away, “and 13 per cent of those who turn up to the emergency out-of-hours Hamish Allan service are also turned away”.

The FOI disclosure further showed that the council was housing people in a variety of types of accommodation, from dedicated temporary flats to B&Bs and hotels, leading McAlpine to point out that: “The poshest hotels in Glasgow – the Radisson, the Hilton, the Grand Central –are almost never fully booked for a start. Until those hotels are completely full, there is accommodation in Glasgow, accommodation that anyone can access if they have sufficient funds to pay for a room. It is simply a refusal on the part of the council to make funds available for those who they have a legal duty to accommodate.”

According to a paper, due to be presented to the Social Care Committee at the end of last month, the council must now assure the regulator that it is “taking action to make immediate improvements as quickly as possible”.

The committee was also asked to consider the background to the issue, which included the city-wide demolition of high rises previously used by the council as emergency accommodation.

The council is understood to be in talks with Registered Social Landlords in an attempt to secure more accommodation. A spokeswoman for the Scottish Housing Regulator told The Pavement: "We had identified the weaknesses in the Council's homelessness service and we have communicated our requirements for improvement to the Council, including the need for it to ensure that it has access to adequate and appropriate emergency accommodation.

"We are continuing to engage with the Council on this matter."

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "We fully acknowledge there are significant pressures currently impacting on our homelessness service. However, changes to housing benefit have stripped millions of pounds worth of funding out of the service and for a number of reasons, there is an overall shortage of available, suitable accommodation in the city."

In England, where local authorities do not have the same duty of care as in Scotland, the problem is even more commonplace. A report published in December showed 50 per cent of people presenting as homeless to local councils in England were turned away unhoused.

Local authorities claim there is not enough temporary housing available.

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