Chamber and committees

The report contains a range of recommendations for the short, medium and long term and we will take forward our response to the recommendations accordingly.

The Scottish Government has not carried out research into local authority funding for temporary and homeless accommodation for 2016-17.

The allocation of appropriate funding for temporary and homeless accommodation for 2016-17 is a matter for local authorities, from their overall financial resources.

This information is not held centrally.

It is for local authorities to decide the appropriate amount and percentage of spend on temporary accommodation in their area.

Local authorities are best placed to allocate appropriate resources from the local government finance settlement to addressing homelessness in their area.

Along with strong legislative rights for homeless households, local authorities and their partners have been developing innovative approaches to preventing homelessness in recent years through the housing options approach.

As well as the Scottish Government announcement of another £150,000 to the local authority led Housing Options Hubs for 2016-17, guidance was recently published to help improve delivery of preventative services. A training toolkit around the prevention of homelessness is also due to be produced in 2016-17.

Funding to local authorities to address homelessness is provided as part of the local government finance settlement for 2016-17. The total funding now amounts to over £10.3 billion.

It is for local authorities to allocate the appropriate funding to address homelessness in their area based on their local housing strategy and local circumstances.

The Scottish Government have announced another £150,000 to the local authority led Housing Options Hubs for 2016-17 to further develop approaches to preventing homelessness and the Scottish Government provides direct funding to third sector organisations to address homelessness in Scotland through funds such as the Housing Voluntary Sector Grant Scheme.

The funding shortfall of £25 million was identified through a survey of local authorities in Scotland by local authority practitioners, supported by the Scottish Government.

The Minister for Housing and Welfare shared this information with the previous UK coalition government in 2014 expressing the Scottish Government’s concerns about the potential impact on homeless households, but we have been disappointed at the response.

The Scottish Government will continue to highlight its concerns to the UK Government and work with our local authority partners to minimise the negative impact of UK Government welfare reforms on vulnerable homeless households.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-28109 on 16 March 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Chief Scientist Office has provided the Scottish Primary Care Research Network with the following funding in each year since 2007-08:

2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16
£207,000	£251,000	£274,000	£373,000	£373,000	£377,000	£377,000	£381,000	£381,000

The progress against each of the commitments in the Mental Health Strategy for Scotland 2012-2015 is updated, where appropriate, on the Scottish Government's website (see following link). Where there is no update on an individual commitment, we will report the status in spring 2016, after the completion of the strategy’s timeframe.

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Mental-Health/Strategy

The Scottish Government consulted on the strategy from 5 September 2011 to 31 January 2012 and the 344 publishable responses are available online: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2014/05/4073. We also held a consultation event on 7 December 2011 in Edinburgh at which around 150 delegates attended representing a range of interests including statutory and non-statutory organisations.