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Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

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Hard work to meet Scotland’s 2012 target

October 02 2009
More than half of councils have missed their homelessness targets

The Scottish government still has "hard work" ahead, if it is to meet the target of wiping out homelessness by 2012.

Statistics recently released by Scotland's Chief Statistician revealed that 18 out of 32 councils missed their interim targets over homelessness. Perth and Kinross was the worst-performing council in Scotland, missing its 88 per cent target by 15 per cent. Stirling, Shetland and Moray did badly, coming in under target by 12 per cent, 11 per cent and nine per cent respectively. The figures highlight that responsibility being placed on local authorities is not being matched by progress on building the 10,000 new affordable homes to rent that Scotland needs.

Housing and communities minister Alex Neil told The Pavement: "while there is still a lot of hard work to do before 2012, it is clear that we are making significant inroads to providing homes for all unintentionally homeless households in our country." This includes a ¬£26m influx from the Scottish government into the first major council house building programme in Scotland for more than a decade. Grants for a record-breaking 8,100 affordable homes have already been approved this year, with £644m of investment from the Scottish government. When Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm announced the target at the end of 2005, he admitted it was ambitious. "This is not to say that it isn't going to be a challenge for local authorities to deliver, but the Executive will be working with them and voluntary agencies," Chisholm said at the time.

Homeless charity Shelter Scotland have calculated that an extra £200m a year - or 0.6 per cent of the Scottish budget - would help Scotland build 10,000 affordable homes to rent each year for the next three years. But according to the government's third draft annual budget, housing planning is set to suffer, with spending on new homes being cut by 30 per cent.

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