Joint Housing Resilience Chairs Group minutes: 17 March 2021

Attendees and apologies

Present

• Kevin Stewart - Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning
• Sally Thomas – SFHA
• Nina Ballantyne - CAB
• Laura Caven, COSLA (part)
• Scottish Government Officials
• Catriona MacKean – SG
• Yvonne Gavan -SG
• Margaret Irving – SG

Apologies

• Cllr Kelly Parry - COSLA

Items and actions

Actions

• Previous Meeting – No changes to the action note.
• SG officials to follow up the possible liabilities if housing associations advocate staff must have the vaccine.

          Action – currently awaiting a response from health colleagues.

• SG officials to find out if there are staffing issues within utility companies preventing them from responding to voids, particularly as the guidance is clear that these services are essential to address voids. Will there still be a problem once restrictions are fully lifted?
• SG officials to connect with Police Scotland to ensure cognisance is taken of current eviction legislation in particular awareness that they are dealing with a criminal offence rather than a civil offence.
• CAS to share sister organisation research data on actions needed to address future debt in the PRS sector as we go into the recovery period.

Update - CAS provided the following information.

• Following a discussion about the Independent Review of Adult Social Care and the importance of linking housing, homelessness and care, members were encouraged to respond to the review highlighting the areas they did not think these issues were fully addressed.
• SG officials to share the completed parliamentary question on tenant loan fund uptake as soon as it is available.

As this was the last meeting before the pre-election period the Minister thanked the chairs for their work over the last year and asked that his thanks also be passed on to the resilience groups.