Training Seminar, Wales

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Trust in Fife staff were delighted to attend a best practice sharing event in Wales. Crisis have been working alongside local councils in Wales advising on using the use of the Private Rented Sector as a housing option for homeless people. Gareth Allenby, a Development Worker with Fife Keyfund, was asked to attend to discuss and share the positive outcomes of our deposit guarantee scheme.

The local authorities in Wales thought it would be really useful to involve representatives from high performing schemes in Scotland as another devolved nation with similarly progressive housing policies. The housing structure in Wales has seen some of the most radical changes to the Private rented sector.

Looking to the future, Wales might expect, as was witnessed in Scotland in the early years of expansion of the priority need criteria that the overall numbers recorded as homeless or threatened with homelessness in Wales will increase in the short-term, as a result of the enhanced incentives for single people facing a housing crisis to approach their Local Authorities for help similar to those in Scotland.

Over time, however, if the new prevention and relief activities are as effective as their advocates hope, the numbers accepted as owed the full duty to be secured accommodation may reduce, although this will also depend on the impact of wider forces, most notably welfare reform. In Scotland between 2012 and 2015 the reduction in homelessness presentation has reduced by 49 percent since similar legislation was implemented.

Of course, the statutory homelessness framework in Wales and elsewhere in the UK does not exist in a vacuum, and future trends will also be influenced by the economic climate and, especially, the housing market context. In this regard, the wider housing policy developments reviewed above which seek to shape the supply and regulation of social, affordable and private rented housing will be at least as important to the prospects for successfully tackling homelessness in Wales as these targeted measures. At the same time, the ongoing impacts of welfare reform, particularly the rolling out of direct payments under Universal Credit, may have deleterious effects which overwhelm any progressive measures open to the Welsh Government. A further round of detailed welfare reforms and cuts were announced in the 2015 Summer Budget, and will take effect in the coming years.

These are major reforms that have particular implications for young single people and larger families, and more generally for the ability of low income households to access the private rented sector.

In Scotland and in particular Fife we have been very proactive in our response to tackling homelessness. The idea of the information sharing of best practise in terms of private sector accommodation and indeed the relationship building between landlords and letting agents was a focal point of these discussions. We hope that by sharing and learning experience across borders will allow for the prevention of homelessness and the financial assistance required by both the government in Westminster and Holyrood will continue to recognise as a positive and continue to eradicate the stigmatisms that still exist in some quarters.