Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office, Edinburgh - Briefing Document Seven

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Parliamentary Officer:Rev Graham Blount
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Briefing Document No 7 - Page 1 of 4

Housing Scotland

Eleven people died in the streets of Edinburgh last year as a result of homelessness and rough sleeping - that is a scandal, and one repeated around Scotland. Churches have a positive track record in responding to people with housing needs, both locally and nationally; in recent years, this has been drawn together in the work of the Scottish Churches Housing Agency (whose co-ordinator, Alastair Cameron, helped prepare this briefing). Working with people who are homeless has taken us beyond their very obvious need, to concerns for the causes of homelessness, and with issues of damp or inadequate housing, fuel poverty, etc.

We have broadly welcomed some positive action by the Executive, like the commitment to end rough sleeping by 2003 and the creation of the Homelessness Task Force, and will retain our interest as housing issues become a major area of political debate in the next year.

Two major issues of current news in the housing field in Scotland are the right to buy for housing association tenants, and the transfer of council housing stock to new landlords. This paper sets out the issues involved in the Single Social Tenancy and New Housing Partnerships.

"Single Social Tenancy"

The 'Single Social Tenancy' will be part of the Housing Bill planned for publication and consultation in the next few months, and legislation by Spring 2001. The current proposals are contained in a Scottish Executive paper A New Single Social Housing Tenancy for Scotland: Rights, Obligations and Opportunities.

The new arrangements will create the same conditions for tenants whether they are in a council house or a housing association property. This is largely welcome, and uncontentious, except that until now most housing association tenants have not had the right to buy their home, while council tenants have. For the Executive, creating the same terms, means upgrading rights in the housing association sector, to include right to buy.

(A) General issues

The points covered by any tenancy agreement normally include security of tenure, right of succession, right to buy, rent, repairs, improvements, consultation, right to manage, information, assignation, sub-letting, lodgers, complaints

There are presently model agreements for both council housing tenancies (known as 'secure' tenancies), and housing association tenancies (most of which are 'assured tenancies'). The Executive's proposal is that these should be brought together in a single form of tenancy enshrining core elements. In general, the proposal is to adopt the arrangements currently applying to secure tenancies, which are generally recognised as offering more robust conditions to tenants. It will be possible to add extra elements by contractual arrangement.

This is generally seen as a sensible rationalisation - the present situation results from changes in legislation during the 1980s, which attempted to move housing associations closer to the private rented sector, a change which has largely not taken place.