Ending homelessness together: annual report to the Scottish Parliament, December 2025

Progress against actions to embed a person-centred approach

1. Develop the evidence base on homelessness and review the homelessness data collection

2. Apply a gendered analysis to our actions and conduct equality impact assessments, ensuring the homelessness system meets the needs of diverse groups of women, including the needs of mothers and children

3. Ensure homelessness services are grounded in no wrong door and person-centred principles

4. Raise public awareness of homelessness and challenge stigma

5. Consider and respond to the recommendations of the measuring impact task and finish group

• We published research into housing insecurity and hidden homelessness in April 2025 to improve our understanding of people who are homeless or in housing precarity but who do not appear in Scotland’s official figures.
• Research commissioned by Shelter Scotland into children’s experiences in temporary accommodation was published in March 2025 and informed the Scottish Government’s housing emergency action plan.
• Our future homelessness data collections will take into account the new statutory homelessness prevention duties.
• The review of content for our homelessness datasets is expected to conclude during 2026 and we will then agree timescales for implementation with local authorities.
• Through continued funding for and involvement with the Change Team, we ensure that our policies are rooted in real life experience of homelessness.
• We updated our equality impact assessment for Scotland’s discretionary housing payment scheme in the last year. It shows how the Scottish Government’s mitigation of the benefit cap makes a positive difference to single mothers and children, contributing to efforts to eradicate child poverty.
• Our new homelessness prevention duties were passed by parliament in September 2025. Shaped by people with lived experience and reflecting no wrong door principles, they will ensure people get the help they need regardless of where the risk of homelessness is first identified.
• The Scottish Government made an increased investment of £100,000 in personalised budgets for frontline staff in winter 2025-26. This empowers frontline workers to support people at risk of rough sleeping where they are and in a way that fits with their needs.
• Thanks to work started during a secondment to the Scottish Government, Homeless Network Scotland staff created and offered a course to explore the drivers and impact of stigma in November 2024.
• Since her appointment in June 2025, the Cabinet Secretary for Housing Màiri McAllan MSP has worked hard to raise awareness of homelessness, challenge biased narratives and ensure that delivery of new homes and tackling homelessness are at the heart of government. In visits to West Granton Housing Co-operative, Scottish Women’s Aid and Fife Gingerbread; during parliamentary debates; and in speeches at Cyrenians’ World Homeless Day reception and at Homeless Network Scotland’s annual conference, the housing secretary has upheld Scotland’s strong rights framework and emphasised the importance of preventing homelessness and reducing harm for children and those with the most difficult experiences of homelessness.
• The Scottish Government is working with the chairs of the measuring impact task and finish group to reach agreement on a final set of indicators. We plan to respond to the report in the new year.