Information published in the Regulator’s monthly dashboard report for August shows that the number of people who applied to local authorities as homeless decreased for the first time since the Regulator started collecting monthly returns from social landlords in April, with a 2% reduction compared to July.

However, there has been a further increase in the number of households in temporary accommodation, with 14,383 at the end of August. Almost 9,500 homes remained empty at the end of August, even though landlords let almost 600 more homes than in July.

Rent arrears also increased from 6.33% in July to 6.37% in August.

The monthly dashboard report is designed to help the Scottish Government and social landlords understand the continuing impact of coronavirus and to support the work of the Social Housing Resilience Group.

Since April, all social landlords provide the Regulator with a monthly return of a small set of key measures that focus on the main areas of impact on landlords’ operations.

The published dashboards and full dataset are available on the Regulator’s website.

Landlords are due to submit the next monthly return on October 7.