Edinburgh homelessness: Capital allocated extra £546,000 to reduce use of temporary accommodation

Council welcomes targeted funding but warns more needed to tackle housing emergency

Edinburgh city council has been given nearly £550,000 by the Scottish Government to help reduce the use of temporary accommodation and increase the options for households to move to a permanent home.

The extra cash – the biggest share of a £2 million distribution of funding to councils across Scotland – comes less than two weeks after the Capital declared a housing emergency. It is a one-off allocation of funding for the current financial year only. And the money has been divided up, not according to the normal distribution formula but based on which councils have seen the biggest percentage increases in use of temporary accommodation.

In a letter to local authorities, Housing Minister Paul McLennan said: “We said we would provide targeted funding of £2 million to the local authorities facing the most significant temporary accommodation pressures to support stock management activity and provide the resource needed to deploy capital monies effectively.”

Edinburgh council has welcomed the extra funding to reduce use of temporary accommodation, but says more is needed to tackle the city's housing emergency.

Edinburgh has received £546,000 – 27.3 per cent of the total amount – while Glasgow got £443,000 or 22.1 per cent, Aberdeen £302,000 or 15.1 per cent and Falkirk £244,000 or 12.2 per cent.

Mr McLennan said the money could be used to increase allocations of social homes to homeless households and to bring empty homes back into use to increase the supply of available affordable housing.

Edinburgh currently has around 5,000 homeless households living in temporary accommodation, the highest number in Scotland. There are about 200 bids for each socially-rented home advertised through Edindex and the city has the highest private-sector rental inflation in the UK.

Edinburgh housing convener Jane Meagher welcomed the extra money, but said more was needed to tackle the problem. She said: "We are delighted the Scottish Government has recognised Edinburgh’s unique challenges and also accepted the principle of targeted funding for those authorities that are facing the most significant pressures on temporary accommodation.

"The letter we have from the minister acknowledges that it is a small amount of money, but every little helps. We’re very glad and appreciate this contribution, but we also recognise it is really not sufficient given the scale of the challenge that we face.”

She said housing officials were still looking at what the extra cash would allow the council to do with the extra cash. “We want to target in a way that has the greatest impact.”

And she said the wider problem of housing shortage remained. "Our aim is to reduce the amount we spend on temporary accommodation by making sure we have sufficient social rented homes to accommodate the people that need it. That’s a bigger and more long-term aim, but that’s what’s going to help finally resolve this and prevent homelessness getting worse.”