Kieran Findlay

Hello and welcome to the Scottish Housing News Podcast. I’m Kieran Findlay, the editor of Scottish Housing News, and with me, as always, is former Dundee housing convener Jimmy Black.

It’s been almost a year since Scotland appointed its first dedicated housing minister and, within that time, 3 councils have declared housing emergencies due to mounting pressures in their local housing systems, and according to reports, dozens of others could be set to follow.

And with good reason. The Scottish Government’s own figures will tell you that the number of new built homes being started is down. The number of completions has fallen, while homelessness applications and the number of households in temporary accommodation are on the rise.

Jimmy Black

Now, housing bodies across Scotland are making a concerted effort to say that it’s not just individual regions that are struggling but that the entire country is in the midst of an emergency.

But what is a housing emergency and why is a declaration important? We’ve asked 2 local authorities that have declared housing emergencies to discuss their respective situations and whether they think the Scottish Government is taking any notice.

So joining us today are Councillor Jane Meagher, the City of Edinburgh Council’s housing convener, and Councillor Allan Casey, the city convener for workforce homelessness and addiction services at Glasgow City Council. Kieran.

Kieran Findlay

We will start with yourself, Jane. What circumstances led to the declaration of a housing emergency in Edinburgh?

Councillor Jane Meagher

I think the circumstances that led us well, the figures speak for themselves. Edinburgh is a caring, successful and growing city and council officers and charities and partners do an incredible job supporting our most vulnerable residents. Sadly, however, despite us doubling the council’s homelessness budget over the last three years, we’re now at risk of failing the households who need our help most, and the thing that sticks in my mind and bothers me and keeps me awake at night is the number of households we have in temporary accommodation.

And that’s just not far short of 5,000 households in temporary accommodation tonight. And of those, some of course, are families with children. And also of those are some people who are in unsuitable temporary accommodation simply because the alternative is unthinkable. Effectively, it’s the streets.

So we’ve got people living in hotel bedrooms, for example, with no cooking facilities and we’ve got to a point where everything we’re doing to try to resolve the problem isn’t succeeding and we need, we need concerted and effective emergency action because we cannot carry on like this. We’re letting down thousands of people in our population, and it’s not fair and it’s not right.

Jimmy Black

Alan, what’s the situation in Glasgow? Is it? Does that mirror the Edinburgh situation?

Councillor Allan Casey

Yeah. Thanks, and thanks for inviting me on first of all, it’s good to be here. Yeah, I mean, I suppose some of that does very much mirror what we’ve experienced in Glasgow. I think there is some differences between Edinburgh and Glasgow, specifically, we obviously are a housing stock transfer authority, so we don’t control any of our own housing. We don’t control any lets in the city and we rely very heavily on our relationship with local registered social landlords and other providers for accommodation. So there is, I suppose, some differences.

For us in Glasgow, there was a number of issues coming to the fore that that really were causing us alarm. Obviously the increase in numbers of people who are seeking assistance for homelessness. We obviously had a situation where the Home Office had made a decision this summer to process backlogged asylum cases in a really quick way and we were being told that they were gonna process them by the end of this year and the projected numbers that we had in that, led us to say that our system just couldn’t cope with those numbers in that very short period of time and we are still going through that. But I suppose, in terms of declaring the emergency, we didn’t want to just be a sort of a virtue signal to say ‘here’s a problem, we need everybody else to come and fix it for us’.

I suppose for us it was about flagging that we recognise that we’re in serious difficulty here. We’ve got an issue that we really need to resolve. We don’t have all the answers to resolve that. Some of the answers lay at government level, both governments, UK and Scottish Government. Some of the answers lay with our relationship with registered social landlords and with our third sector partners. So it was really to highlight that yes, we understand that there’s an issue, we’re not giving up on that issue now is the time to kind of bring forward action in terms of how we address it.

Kieran Findlay

So you’ve talked some numbers there, Alan, but what’s it like on the ground? How is this housing emergency directly impacting people?

Councillor Allan Casey

Well, I suppose, in Glasgow, same as Edinburgh, we’ve got significant numbers of people who are trapped in temporary accommodation. We’ve got to shy of 4,000 people who are stuck in temporary accommodation in the city just now and we are seeing significant numbers of applications coming forward. Those asylum cases as well. And also we’re seeing a sharp rise in households coming from outwith Scotland. We’re seeing an increase in people coming from various local authorities in England, where they obviously have different legislation when it comes to homelessness. So single adult males are not legally entitled to accommodation in some parts of England and we’re seeing a rise in those coming forward.

We are still managing to keep our rough sleeping numbers at the very bare minimum, but that has meant, to avoid that happening, we’ve had to increase over the last year our use of bed and breakfast accommodation by over 100%. So we’ve increased that when actually over this financial period we were looking to exit B&B accommodation because we know that that is not suitable accommodation for folk to be in at any length of time.

Kieran Findlay

The first thing that comes to mind with this temporary accommodation thing is there’s the financial case that is clearly there that the alternative must be cheaper.

Councillor Jane Meagher

Can I come in on that? Because, you know, we spend actually, I don’t have the exact figures in front of me, but I think last year it was something like £26 million on temporary accommodation and that’s not a good use of public money, but we’re forced into that. We’re trapped really by a number of factors. Not least the fact that private rents in Edinburgh are the highest in Scotland and amongst the rates of private rental increase are higher than the rest of Europe even. So, currently, a 2-bed home in Edinburgh, the rental figure for that is around about £1,400 which is of course more than most a lot of people would be paying for a mortgage. So we’ve got a very high rental rate here in this city and that in turn has consequences for things like hotel accommodation, but also for the kind of temporary accommodation that we can find for people who present as homeless.

I just want to quickly say that that 5,000 figure I talked about in temporary accommodation, that’s households, that’s not people. We reckon the actual figures of human beings if you like, is between 7,000 and 8,000 people. I just want to set the scale of the problem. I mean the other factor for us, and I don’t know if it’s the same for you, Allan, but Edinburgh is a growing city and we’ve got a lot of pressure on what is a shortage of supply in homes and we got, for example, the Forth Green Freeport coming with an anticipated 5,000 and odd new jobs for the city and yet the bottom line is that there’s nowhere for them to live the way things are at the moment.

So there’s a whole lot of pressures coming together that made us declare this housing emergency and, in common with Allan, it’s about acknowledging that we’ve got a problem. It’s about putting together an action plan that indicates the actions we are currently taking and the ones that we propose to take and, but also making the case for fairer funding for housing and putting it shoving it right up the list of priorities, not only for politicians, but also for the public, because I think a lot of folk don’t understand the sharp end of this housing crisis, which is the folk who are homeless and in temporary accommodation.

Jimmy Black

Yeah, Allan, I would like to to ask you about the cost to the council of housing so many homeless people, and of dealing with that situation. You’re getting about 1,000 people a month, or maybe even more, coming to you to ask for homelessness advice and assistance but you’re saying a worst case scenario in your housing emergency report could be £23.6 million of an overspend on homelessness. What effect does that have on the council and where are you getting that money from?

Councillor Allan Casey

It’s a very good question and the worst case scenario is a lot higher than that actually. If over the next full financial year, the impact of that potentially we’re looking at an overspend of around about £50 million, if it’s worst case scenario so I’ve been very clear publicly that that is simply unsustainable and that that is a direct result of obviously UK Government decisions and we’ve been very clear that the UK Government, if they’re fast tracking those applications, that should come alongside funding at the same time because let’s be frank, the UK Government have been sitting on those applications for years and years and years, and deciding to do all that at the one time, causing that massive impact in terms of our services, is simply unsustainable.

We are obviously in the budget setting process just now. In the last year, we have had to use our reserves from our Health and Social Care Partnership to deal with a huge overspend in terms of homelessness. But that money is diminishing and we really need to find a sustainable way to fund it. We’ve been making the case to both UK Government and Scottish Government that we know how much it costs to accommodate these people because we have to fund that every single year, so we know how much the system costs. But actually clearly the answer to this, and I’m sure we’ll move on to this, but the answer to this is to upscale the new build affordable housing programme, and that’s the only way that we get out of a housing emergency is building more houses and we really need to focus on that. And we’ve delivered record levels of new build housing in Glasgow, but we always are saying we stand ready to deliver more if more resource becomes available and we can maybe talk a bit more detail about that.

Jimmy Black

Yeah, let’s have a look at what you’re calling on the Scottish Government to do, let’s have some specific demands. What are you wanting them to do? Is it more money? Is it changes in the law? Is it some difference of emphasis? Give us some ideas.

Councillor Allan Casey

Yeah, I suppose there’s a few different things. One thing I’ll talk about is the recent changes to legislation when it comes to local connections, which I don’t know if your viewers have been aware of, but just to very briefly explain that and it’s something that we supported the introduction of, but the timing of it couldn’t probably have come at a worse time for us. But basically, it’s to remove barriers from folk accessing services. So if you come from one local authority but you want to present at another local authority, there’s no barriers to doing that.

The problem with that is though, that we’ve seen an increase in terms of the number of people who are coming from other local authorities because generally speaking, we have a really good service in Glasgow City Council and people do see and recognise the service they’re getting. But that change never came with any additional resource or any way of recharging other local local authorities for that. So we are seeing an increase in the number of people coming through the system which previously we wouldn’t have had the statutory duty for. So we’re asking, we’ve been asking government to look at ways in which that can be funded or financed to address that concern.

The other thing that we have been putting a strong case forward for is clearly there has been an announcement of a cut in the affordable housing supply programme over the next number of years, but there is a number of local authorities that are struggling to spend their money or struggling to develop at the pace in which we are ready to do in Glasgow. So is there a way in which that can be refocused in the areas that are most in need and we have strongly put that case forward to say ‘well actually, we stand ready to upscale our new build housing programme, can that money be directed in ways in which it can be delivered in the areas most in need?’ And I’m sure Edinburgh would probably back that position as well.

So those are suppose are two very minor things. There’s other ways in which some of the funding, we’ve been asking whether or not we can use new build affordable housing supply programme funding to help staffing issues because, in local government, we are really struggling when it comes to finances. I don’t think anybody is making an excuse to say that local government finance is in any way shape or form in a comfortable position, but is there other ways in which we can spend that money at a very early level to increase the way in which we can upscale the affordable supply programme?

We’re having really detailed conversations with government and hopefully we can try and make progress there but that progress is slow.

Councillor Jane Meagher

I just wanted to quickly back up what Allan’s saying, because I totally agree that the fundamental problem here is a shortage of housing of all tenures and all types. And in common with Allan, we’ve made the case to the Scottish Government on many occasions about, effectively underspend in other local authorities because we’ve got a strong pipeline of both land and projects ready to rumble as soon as the money becomes available. Last year we were able to use £10 million of underspend from other authorities, and we’ve been asking for that to be incorporated into our base budget so that we could we could make planning assumptions based on all of that.

A couple of other things that would help, I think in terms of legislation, or at least the Scottish Government’s role, is to do with planning. What we’ve submitted is our next City Plan, which of course affects lots of things, including a requirement that student housing would have incorporated in it a proportion of homes that would be available for non-students, so to speak.

We’ve got various ideas which need the ratification and approval of the Scottish Government, but I think the fundamental problem is to do with the Scottish Government’s priorities. I mean the Deputy First Minister is on record as saying that she made the difficult decision to spend £179 million on propping up the Scottish National Investment Bank because for her that was a greater priority than building housing. Whereas, to me, that was a completely artificial dichotomy because we know from the research that when you initiate a house building programme that the benefits to the economy are vast not only to the local economy but to the economy of the whole country.

I think in terms of an ask to the Scottish Government, it would be in my view to get your priorities right and surely making sure that people have somewhere decent, affordable and secure to live is a pretty fundamental requirement.

Jimmy Black

Glasgow and Edinburgh, uniquely among Scottish local authorities, get a large portion of their housing development funding given to them directly by the Scottish Government to not exactly to do with as you please, but within certain conditions. And you also get some money from the same programme that everyone else in Scotland is on. I think you had, in Edinburgh, a report commissioned which suggested you might get more money if you stopped distributing the funds yourselves under the special arrangement and you’d actually have, on aggregate, a higher sum.

The important thing is that Glasgow and Edinburgh cooperate together. Is that a feasible option or is it just a red herring?

Councillor Jane Meagher

Well, to me, that is a feasible option. It’s the TMDF that we’re talking about. However, it does lead to a division of money which gives Glasgow 70% and Edinburgh 30%. Now, there are lots of arguments that say that Glasgow, because of the profile of its population, requires more than Edinburgh does, and I totally get that. But I don’t get why that means it should be 70/30 and I suppose I would very, very, very much welcome some sort of negotiation with Glasgow about how we approach all of that to our mutual benefit because we’ve got very similar problems and we don’t have the same problems or issues as you do in relation to asylum seekers, for example, we’ve got different problems. But the other reality is that the almost geographic distance between our two cities is shrinking in the sense that we have housing developments in our case on the west of the city, which is where we have land which is absolutely ripe for development.

So in principle, I would be very open to, I believe, mutually advantageous negotiations about how we could deal with this.

Jimmy Black

And we’re talking about £92 million here between the two councils and it’s not being cut in cash terms at least this year. Allan, have you got any thoughts and this is something that you’ve considered yourself at any point?

Councillor Allan Casey

It’s obviously the TMF fund that you’re talking about and other funding parcels, I suppose, I have touched on this in my earlier answer, I think we have to have a fundamental resetting in terms of how funding is directed to those areas most in need and I would never be supportive of anything that takes away resources from Glasgow clearly, so I’m never gonna commit to doing such a thing, but we need to make sure that we’re having sensible discussions and conversations constantly in terms of how funding is allocated and where it’s allocated. Whether we’re looking at areas of deprivation, so looking at SIMD levels, looking at the housing needs assessments and in each of your local authorities to make sure that supply meets demand. We obviously have to consider all of that in the round and as I say, I’m more than happy as always to discuss these things. But, I would never be supportive of something that sees resources being pulled away from Glasgow because I know how much that Glasgow needs that funding.

Kieran Findlay

Of course, one of the main reasons for declaring a housing emergency is to ratchet up this pressure to the Scottish Government. That pressure has come from different angles. It’s coming from housing charities like Shelter Scotland. They’ve been a leading voice in many ways on declaring a nationwide housing emergency.

I know in Edinburgh there was a paper by the Edinburgh Poverty Commission that was also circulated to councillors beforehand. How influential have these bodies been in making your respective decisions?

Councillor Jane Meagher

Well, I suppose the bottom line is we couldn’t have done it without them. For example, the registered social landlords have a clear role in relation to all this and we’ve been working very closely alongside them, but also we have an organisation in Edinburgh called SHAPE which is an umbrella organisation for 18 of the voluntary sector organisations working with people who are homeless and we’ve worked very closely and collaboratively, collaboratively with them in terms of declaring the housing emergency. So that kind of partnership approach has been fundamental to naming the problem, but more importantly, they’re absolutely vital to helping us to resolve the problem.

For example, last week we had a housing summit hosted by Edinburgh University and again they’re useful partners because they bring in statistical information and research into our activities. So in terms of identifying the problem and approaching solutions then that kind of joint approach is totally fundamental.

Councillor Allan Casey

Yeah, it’s a similar position for ourselves. Partnership working for us is absolutely crucial and key because like I said at the start of the podcasters, we don’t control any of our own housing stock. So without partnership working, we would be in real trouble in terms of being able to fulfil our statutory duties.

So, yeah, absolutely, the partnership working has been really key and before we declared the emergency, we were already having regular stakeholder meetings with our 59 RSLs in the city with our third sector partners or commission services, and just being as honest and open as we possibly can. We took a paper to our IJB meeting early February last year that outlined the risks, in terms of the finances and the numbers of people who are accessing our services, could have and we were very clear in saying the risks are that rough sleeping will be on the rise, potentially we will struggle to fulfil a statutory duties.

We need to look outside the box and find ways in which we can try and avoid this as much as possible. It wasn’t about, as I said at the start, giving up on the situation, it was about being honest and transparent about the issues that we’re facing and now coming together and working in terms of how we deliver that. So yeah, obviously Shelter came along at the meeting where I formally declared the housing emergency and we did that I suppose in partnership which was really good and sent a strong message.

Now I know that there were debates in the Scottish Parliament trying to do similar likewise, and I know that the Scottish Government, I suppose, resisted formally declaring a housing emergency, and I think the rationale for that was around optics and saying well, look, declaring an emergency on itself and I did get some criticism in the national press and stuff like that around some of this as well because what does declaring an emergency actually do? Because one, it doesn’t actually come with any additional powers. Two, it doesn’t give you any more money. It doesn’t actually do anything. And for me, it was just about recognising the situation we’re in.

But I think the Scottish Government have taken a different approach to be very clear to say, ‘Well look, declaring an emergency housing emergency doesn’t necessarily bring additional powers’ but we could argue about that, I suppose, the optics of that and saying well, look, it’s a bit of recognition of the situation we’re in and I don’t think the Scottish Government have shied away from that. And the Deputy First Minister has been clear when presenting the budget that her priorities are absolutely in terms of expanding the affordable housing supply programme funding if more funding becomes available.

I know as we speak today and I’ve not seen it yet, but the UK Government are obviously setting their own budget. A lot of the decisions are made at Westminster, we can’t let Westminster off the hook here because a lot of the housing situation we are in and the housing emergency we are in isn’t a new thing. It’s been decades long of poor decision making at a UK Government level that’s led to the financial situation that we’re in and indeed the housing situation we’re in. So even that budget that’s being set at Westminster has to increase public spending, it has to increase spending on capital programmes to allow for those Barnet Consequentials to come forward to the Scottish Government, and, the Scottish Government has been clear that that is their first priority, if more capital spending becomes available.

Councillor Jane Meagher

Can I just chip in here and just point out that when we declared our housing emergency in Edinburgh, I got the opposite reaction actually. But the most important thing to say is that all of the five parties involved in the Edinburgh Council subscribed to the fact that we have a housing emergency and I think that was a step forward and I think power manifests itself in lots of different ways and I think it has brought a certain type of power to us in declaring a housing emergency. Would we be doing this podcast if we hadn’t declared a housing emergency?

Would I have been on BBC Radio Scotland talking about it if we hadn’t declared a housing emergency? And endless, I won’t bore you with the list, but it’s drawn a lot of public attention to this and, to me, that, in turn, puts pressure on policy and decision makers because this is a problem that affects everybody. People whose offspring, I was I’m gonna say children, I mean, my kids are all grown up, can’t afford to buy a house in the place that they were born and brought up, which is Portobello, because that house prices have just shot through the roof.

I take your point, Allan, about the decisions at Westminster but let’s be honest. Political decisions have been made in lots of different contexts, including the Scottish Government, and I think as Shelter recently said, however small the pie, it’s up to the politicians to decide how to cut the slices and that kind of sums it up.

Councillor Allan Casey

Can I just be blunt? Sorry. Can I come back in? Obviously, it’s a conversation we’re having, not a debate, but you will not see any disagreement with me. It is about priorities and prioritisation. For me, though it’s just about making sure that a big player, and the decision making, isn’t let off the hook easily by just pointing the finger to one government, one Parliament because I think equally both governments have got questions to answer. I can hold the Scottish Government to account as equally as I can hold the UK Government to account and we need to be able to do that in a space that is constructive. So you won’t hear any disagreement from me on that, it is about prioritisation and I do hope that we see changes to both UK Government and Scottish Government budgets that reflect a need for delivering, at pace, an increased affordable housing supply programme.

Councillor Jane Meagher

Totally with you on that, Allan, totally with you.

Kieran Findlay

First of all, thanks Jane for putting the Scottish Housing News Podcast top billing above BBC Good Morning Scotland, where it deserves to be. Secondly, we haven’t mentioned Argyll and Bute Council yet. They declared in June and you guys were November and December respectively. And I think just to touch on what Allan said about ‘it doesn’t give you additional powers’ but it does bring people together, it has sharpened the focus. There was four Argyll and Bute housing associations, the chairpersons of each of them backed it immediately. Argyll and Bute have since hosted a housing summit, which brought together a range of different stakeholders and partners. They plan to release a housing emergency action plan early this year and they’ve appointed a new housing project officer to help speed up the delivery of improved housing options.

So not looking at the Scottish Government or the UK Government, Allan I’ll come to you first, what has Glasgow City Council put in place itself to deal with the problem?

Councillor Allan Casey

Yeah, it’s a good question and I suppose it does back up the earlier questions because you can’t just do the same thing over and over again, you need to do things differently. We are doing very similar to what you have outlined there that Argyll and Bute have done. We’ve developed a housing emergency action plan and we’ve established a cross-party working monitoring group, if you want to call it that, at a council level which will receive regular updates and discuss some of these issues. We’ve hosted, I don’t want to call them summits but it’s the same idea, where we’ve got crucial stakeholders in a room where we’ve discussed what is in all of our gifts to address this, cause I’ve been very clear that the council don’t hold all of the tools in our arsenal to address some of this. We need to work in partnership with organisations, so we’ve been doing it in a genuine partnership approach.

Just last week we had Homeless Network Scotland and all of our third sector partners in Glasgow to discuss this very specifically, and we’ve agreed to, I suppose, co-author the housing emergency action plan. So we were very clear, in terms of as these things happen and the council’s action plan is what the council can do, but I was very clear that actually, we need a co-authored action plan between all our partners to say, what are the RSLs bringing to the table here? What are the third sector partners bringing to the table and, most importantly and crucially, and some of this is always missed in these discussions, but what are people who’ve lived and have had living experience bringing to this discussion as well?

Because we know that people are obviously being caught up in temporary accommodation and homelessness applications for long periods of time. We need to listen and hear from them about some of the changes that we can make. So I’m very clear that we’re gonna try and publish an action plan that looks like a holistic approach across all sectors to address the situation that we’re in.

We’re obviously looking at right now really practical issues as well. How do we really quickly turn around empty properties? So that’s something that is coming back to us and there’s a number of reasons for that. Whether it be the condition that the vacant units are being left in, how do we put pressure on the utilities companies who for some reason, when properties are lying vacant, there is no priority given to them. They take months and months and months to get the utilities connected to them. We need to reduce those timescales to get those empty vacant properties turned around really quickly, so we’re working in that space.

We’ve also crucially asked our RSLs in Glasgow to try and provide more of their available lets towards our homelessness applications. So we’ve asked them a really challenging target of 60% of their available lets to go towards homelessness. That’s obviously difficult for all of us to try and achieve and also the turnover of properties is reduced so the available properties that we’ve got aren’t the same as what they were last year, or the year before because less people are moving for various reasons, cost of living, rent controls, economic uncertainty. I would be here for hours explaining all of the actions that we’re taking, but hopefully it gives you a bit of a flavour of the work that we’re doing to try and address the concerns that have been raised.

Jimmy Black

Allan, just before Kieran comes in with another question, or lets Jane answer the same one, you were talking about using modular accommodation for emergency temporary accommodation at one point. Is that still something you’re thinking of and what does that mean? Is it caravans and portacabins?

Councillor Allan Casey

Yeah. So just in terms of that, when we were discussing this, we were really concerned that the numbers of people who were gonna come through the system, we were considering whether or not we would actually have to set up emergency overnight centres etcetera in leisure centres and I was open and upfront about it. But thankfully, over the winter period, we didn’t have to do that. We managed to accommodate people, whether it be B&Bs or temporary accommodation, temporary furnished flats, etcetera. But what we’re looking at doing is, is there a way in which we can utilise vacant derelict land to very quickly turn around or create space that has modular type accommodation? Now we don’t know what that looks like yet. Is that portacabins? Is that pre-fabricated homes, small prefabricated homes? Because what we want to be doing is making sure we get away from people stuck in B&Bs because we know the issues that people face there. Whether it be cooking facilities, just the space that’s provided to people and stuff like that. So is there better ways we can do that?

That piece of work is looking at whether or not we can quickly convert other types of properties that are lying vacant in our city We’ve got access to office block accommodation. Is there ways in which we can retrofit that into providing better temporary accommodation? I’m not saying that this is perfect, but Jane mentioned it right at the very start. The alternative to us providing those types of accommodation is people rough sleeping and we need to be able to avoid that as much as we possibly can.

Jimmy Black

Jane, do you want to come and answer that same question, the one that Kieran asked, about what are the practical things that Edinburgh wants to do now?

Councillor Jane Meagher

Yeah, it was really interesting listening to Allan talk because there are lots of parallels with what we’re doing. So yeah, we’ve got an action plan which reports to the Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee, which I convene. We had 17 workshops to put this action plan together including, just taking on board your point Allan about lived experience, we had the Tenants Federation, we had the Poverty Alliance and we had 17 workshops of various interested and important groups. But in terms of the actions, we’ve actually got this, I think it’s really complicated, sort of project management thing with about 300 actions, but fundamentally what we’re doing, we’ve just recruited another empty homes officer. So for us, that’s about empty homes, not council homes, but empty private homes, we’ve put in an extra 44 staff into what you might call prevention work, because we know that if you can prevent homelessness, then that’s better than dealing with the consequences.

We have managed to reduce the number of voids, I’m very pleased to say, because that’s a real priority, but not easy to resolve necessarily. I was very interested in what you said about utilities, Allan, cause we’ve got the exact same problem. Staff spend hours on the phone trying to get the ownership of a meter turned over to the council. We’ve increased the percentage of housing allocations to homeless applicants. We’ve acquired some additional off-the-shelf council homes through our acquisitions policy. We’ve been able to buy some new homes cause some developers have been struggling to sell properties and so we’ve been able to buy homes from them at a reduced cost, but also a cost that’s under what it would cost us to build.

Jimmy Black

I want to throw some statistics at you. In 1999, we had 700,000 socially rented houses, and now we have 626,000 socially rented houses and we had a population then of about 5.1 million. Now we’ve got a population of about 5.4 million. And we’ve got a housing emergency. What are your thoughts? You know, how did we get here?

Councillor Jane Meagher

Oh, Maggie Thatcher. I mean the right to, sorry, Allan, I don’t know if you want to come in, but to me, you know the Right to Buy, in itself, there’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem at the time, and I was around at the time, was that the income from that we weren’t allowed to use to build more social rented homes. And that is a real that’s fundamentally, I think, where the whole thing started. It so seriously depleted the council housing stock that we had, to the point where now we’ve only got just over 20,000 council homes.

Councillor Allan Casey

Yeah, I suppose, in terms of those numbers, there was a stagnation in terms of new build, affordable housing. In our affordable housing strategy, I suppose, to bring it to present time, in terms of approvals for new build housing in the city, we’re aiming to have around 80% of them for affordable homes. But yeah, we can’t ignore right to buy. We can’t ignore the market conditions that previous UK Government budgets of both colours have created in terms of the financial crash, away back a number of years ago, have caused in terms of the housing market as well.

But equally, from those times that you’re talking about, I suppose we have to look at the conditions that people have been living as well in terms of some of our affordable housing or council housing or registered social landlords and the density of some of those tenemental properties, especially in Glasgow. So there’s been huge regeneration in Glasgow that has really transformed communities and I suppose if you look to Glasgow now compared to the timeframe that you’re talking about, it is remarkably better than what it was in terms of the communities and building communities moving forward.

Kieran Findlay

Thanks, councillor Alan Casey, the city convenor for workforce homelessness and addiction services at Glasgow City Council. Thanks to Councillor Jane Meagher, the City of Edinburgh Council’s housing convener. We did invite Argyll and Bute Council on to this podcast, but I appreciate it’s a busy time to be a councillor, never mind one involved in housing and budgets.

My name’s Kieran Findlay. Thanks also to my co-host Jimmy Black. And we’ll be back with another episode in a couple of weeks.