Scottish Government high level action plan in response to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

15: Housing

Thematic Tags

Adequate housing; Accessible housing; Temporary accommodation; Homelessness; Disability; Intellectual disabilities; Older people; Migrants; Racialised minorities; Gypsy/Travellers; Socio-economic background; Tax; Maximum available resources; Culturally appropriate housing

Concluding Observations 47a

The Committee urges the State Party, along with the devolved governments […] To take all measures necessary to ensure the availability of affordable and social housing units by streamlining planning regulations, prioritizing funding for new construction, rehabilitating substandard housing and ensuring accessibility for disadvantaged groups, in particular persons with disabilities, older persons, migrants, ethnic minorities and low – and middle-income households, with a focus on single mothers.

Context

Housing to 2040 (H2040) is Scotland’s long-term housing strategy, focusing on supply, affordability, choice, net zero goals, and accessibility. It addresses housing supply across Scotland, including rural and island areas. A central commitment in the strategy is our commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, of which at least 70% should be for social rent and 10% in rural and island communities. Between April 2007 and March 2025, 139,203 affordable homes were delivered, including over 99,000 for social rent and more than 28,000 council homes.

In response to the housing emergency, we targeted funding of £42 million in 2024-25 to local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures, the aim being to increase the supply of social and affordable homes through acquisitions and bringing long term empty social homes back into use.

Key Actions

We have increased the affordable housing supply programme budget for 2025-26 to £808 million. There has been a total of 28,537 affordable homes completed between 23 March 2022 and 31 March 2025 towards the target, consisting of 21,937 (77%) homes for social rent, 4,087 (14%) for other affordable rent, and 2,513 (9%) for affordable home ownership.

We will increase the supply of affordable housing by doubling our investment in acquisitions from £40 million to £80 million in 2025-26.

Through the EHRF, we are providing funding of over £1.1 million to organisations working to promote LGBTQI+ equality in Scotland in 2025-26. This funding provides support for a range of initiatives, including supporting policy development for LGBTQI+ people, including housing inequality, research into the lives of the LGBTQI+ community and an LGBT helpline.

We introduced the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 in October 2025. The act brings forward a package of reforms to help ensure people have a safe, secure and affordable place to live, delivering on the strategies we have brought forward in recent years. The act deals mainly with rented, particularly private rented, accommodation and homelessness prevention.

We established a H2040 strategic board to assess progress towards the H2040 vision. The strategic board is co-chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and the COSLA community wellbeing spokesperson. It provides strategic oversight of policy development and delivery; accountability on progress by providing advice on the development of an appropriate measurement framework and tracking progress; ownership of H2040 beyond government; and the ability to involve ‘end users’ by bringing a range of views into consideration.

Concluding Observation 47b

The Committee urges the State Party, along with the devolved governments […] To review property tax rates with a view to increasing the supply of housing units for sale or long-term rental and carry out an assessment of the economic and social impacts of the complete exemption from tax on profits and capital gains by real estate investment trusts.

Context

We have taken account of the specifics of Scotland’s housing market when setting the rates and bands for residential Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT). Various reliefs are in place such as support for the provision of affordable housing by local authorities and housing associations and encouraging the development of the build to rent model in Scotland. The rates and bands for LBTT are considered annually as part of the budget process.

Key Actions

We are undertaking a review of LBTT legislation, which will look at the residential and non-residential LBTT arrangements to ensure their policy intent is still met. We have appointed Alma Economics to undertake independent research and stakeholder engagement is underway. The review will run over the remainder of the current parliamentary term. The review is intended to support decisions by a future government in the next Scottish Parliament on whether any legislative changes should be brought forward.

Concluding Observa tion 47c

The Committee urges the State Party, along with the devolved governments […] To ensure the greatest possible security of tenure to tenants […] and guarantee that evictions, when unavoidable, comply with due process, involve consultation with the affected persons, consider alternatives, allow for appeal and result in adequate compensation or adequate alternative housing.

Context

Through the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025, we will build a system of rent control that offers vital protections to tenants and values investment in delivering new homes specifically for the rented market. The act includes measures to provide greater protection for tenants during the eviction process and to make it easier and more meaningful for tenants to challenge an unlawful eviction and receive appropriate damages (between three and 36 times the monthly rent) where an unlawful eviction is found to have occurred.

Discretionary housing payments (DHPs) in Scotland play a vital role in supporting tenants to sustain their tenancies and prevent homelessness. DHPs provide financial assistance to a qualifying individual if they are struggling with their housing costs. Since 2017, we have invested over £712 million in DHPs to deliver our commitment to fully mitigate the UK Government’s removal of the spare room subsidy (the bedroom tax) and benefit cap; delivering vital action to reduce poverty, safeguard tenancies and prevent homelessness.

Local authorities are legally obligated to provide accommodation, advice, and assistance to individuals at risk of homelessness. They also bear statutory responsibility for preparing local housing strategies that assess housing needs within their jurisdictions. These strategies must include a statement affirming the local authority’s commitment to addressing housing inequalities. Furthermore, local authorities should demonstrate that they have considered specialist provision requirements for people of all ages, household types, tenures, and protected characteristics, including those from ethnic minority groups.

Key Actions

This year £79.7 million will be spent mitigating the bedroom tax, helping over 94,000 households in Scotland sustain their tenancies, 14,000 of which are families with over 20,500 children. Over 11,000 of those families are lone parent families.

We will take steps through the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 to create a new route for ending a joint tenancy that does not require mutual agreement, which will ensure that no tenant can inadvertently be made homeless. To end a private residential tenancy, all joint tenants must agree and sign a notice to leave, giving the landlord at least 28 days’ notice in writing (unless a shorter notice period has been agreed). Additional provisions in the act will ensure that no joint tenant can be ‘trapped’ in a tenancy indefinitely against their will.

To support domestic abuse victim/survivors the act includes duties on social landlords to develop, implement and maintain a domestic abuse policy setting out how they support their tenants experiencing domestic abuse. The policy will also direct particular consideration to individuals building up financial arrears due to domestic abuse before any legal action to recover possession of a property on rent arrears grounds can begin.

The act will broaden Scottish Ministers’ powers to implement ‘Awaab’s Law’, which will ensure landlords promptly address issues that are hazardous to tenants’ health, start ing with damp and mould as well as a review of circumstances where rents could be increased above the level of the rent cap.

We continue to fund the Mortgage to Rent and Mortgage to Shared Equity schemes, which are part of the Home Owners’ Support Fund which offers aid to those at the lower end of the Scottish housing market who are experiencing difficulties in managing loan payments secured against their homes and are at risk of repossession.

Concluding Observation 47d

The Committee urges the State Party, along with the devolved governments: To address the root causes of homelessness by ensuring adequate resources for local authorities, prioritizing long-term solutions […] guaranteeing safe and adequate living conditions in temporary accommodation, including through a comprehensive regulatory framework, and ending the punitive approach towards rough sleeping.

Context

We declared a housing emergency on 15 May 2024 in recognition of the pressure on local authority housing supply and homelessness services which led to a rise in temporary accommodation use. On 2 September 2025, the Cabinet Secretary for Housing launched the housing emergency action plan. The plan has three key objectives: ending children living in unsuitable accommodation; supporting the housing needs of vulnerable communities; and building our future by maximising growth and investment in Scotland’s housing sector.

Our ending homelessness together action plan outlines how national government, local government and third sector partners will work together on our shared ambition to end homelessness. Since 2018, we have provided £62.5 million to Scottish local authorities to support a transition to a rapid rehousing homelessness model. This model includes Housing First, which offers a settled tenancy and wrap around support to people experiencing homelessness who have multiple and complex needs. Since 2020, we have supported the eradication of night shelters in Scotland by providing £1.29 million of funding to deliver Rapid Rehousing Welcome Centres in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 establishes new ‘Ask and Act’ duties on ‘relevant bodies’ named in the act, such as social landlords, NHS Scotland and Police Scotland, to ask about a person’s housing situation as early as they can and act to avoid them becoming homeless wherever possible. The act also makes changes to existing homelessness duties for local authorities, so that help is provided to those threatened with homelessness six months before homelessness rather than the current two months.

Key Actions

We are providing £100 million in multi-year funding (2018-2026) for the ending homelessness together fund which aims to prevent homelessness, end rough sleeping, and reduce use of temporary accommodation. Since 2018, £72.5 million has supported rapid rehousing, including the housing first initiative, which has delivered over 2,100 tenancies – 83% of people remained in a settled home after a year.

We are investing £4 million in homelessness prevention pilots in 2025-26 to help local authorities, frontline services and relevant partners prepare for the new homelessness prevention duties. The fund opened for applications in September 2025 and will run until December 2026.

We are investing £2 million through DHPs to support households in temporary accommodation to find settled homes in the private rented sector.

We have asked councils to prioritise the acquisition of family homes, and to contact every household with children in quality temporary accommodation to discern whether homes can be made permanent.

We are providing a £1 million housing first uplift to rapid rehousing transition plan funding in 2025-26 taking our investment to £9 million.

We will invest £500,000 in winter preparedness measures to help ensure people at risk of rough sleeping get a suitable bed for the night in the cold winter months.

In May 2025, we launched the Upstream Homelessness Prevention Fund backed by £1 million to help prevent people from becoming homeless. Partnerships funded by the programme will receive a cash fund for individual payments of up to £1,300 to help prevent people becoming homeless.

Concluding Observation 47e

The Committee urges the State Party, along with the devolved governments [..] To ensure access to adequate housing for individuals with intellectual disabilities, enabling those residing in inpatient units to be discharged and preventing their institutionalization.

Context

The Scottish Government has made it clear that Coming Home is a priority and that a hospital cannot ever be a home. We are working closely with COSLA and other partners to deliver the change required to ensure the rights of individuals to adequate housing are upheld.

Key Actions

We have established a Coming Home Action Plan Short Life Working Group, which is meeting between July to November 2025. The aim of this group is to develop a joint action plan with COSLA to address the outstanding recommendations within the Coming Home Implementation Report 2022 and address key recommendations within other reports. This action plan will focus on seven key themes: National Support Panel; people in hospital 10+ years; housing; dynamic Support Register data; skilling up community services; redesign of learning disability inpatient services; and collaborative commissioning.

We have commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to deliver specific local improvement work to reduce delayed discharges for people with learning disabilities and complex needs, including a physical adaptations test of change within NHS Ayrshire and Arran.

We continue to implement The Coming Home Programme through allocation of £20 million to health and social care partnerships, consulting on a national panel for the upcoming Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill, and building a professional network via Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

We asked the Mental Welfare Commission to review the care and treatment of people with learning disabilities and complex care needs who have remained in hospital for more than ten years. The ‘Hospital Is Not A Home’ report was published in January 2025 and we are considering the findings and recommendations of this report.

Concluding Observation 4 7f

The Committee urges the State Party, along with the devolved governments: To ensure adequate, culturally appropriate accommodation and stopping sites for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, including access to water, sanitation and electricity, in coordination with local authorities and review and repeal law or policies that undermine their traditional ways of life.

Context

We published our second joint Gypsy/Traveller Action Plan Action Plan with COSLA on improving the lives of, and setting out steps to improve outcomes for, Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland. Under the Gypsy/Traveller Accommodation Fund (GTAF) nearly £15 million has been committed or spent between 2021-22 and 2024-25 to allow councils to progress projects for more and better accommodation. To drive a significant improvement in the quality of sites, we published an interim site design guide for Gypsy/Traveller sites, developed in conjunction with local authorities and with input from members of Gypsy/Traveller communities. This will assist new build and site redevelopments of a high quality to meet the varying needs of families, including children, older and disabled people.

Key Actions

We are taking the necessary steps so that, from April 2026, funding for Gypsy/Traveller accommodation can be accessed alongside housing through the affordable housing supply programme. This demonstrates a long term commitment to supporting local authorities to meet their duties in relation to the provision of Gypsy/Traveller accommodation.

We will commission work on an accommodation needs toolkit. This will focus on improving how housing needs and demand assessments, local housing strategies, and development plans represent the needs of Gypsy/Travellers.

An independent evaluation of the Gypsy/Traveller accommodation fund and interim site design guide is currently underway with a final report due to be published in 2026. The aim is to collect key insights from demonstration projects to inform future initiatives, the final site design guide, and policy related to Gypsy/Traveller accommodation. Diffley Partnership has provided Gypsy/Traveller community members with an update on the research undertaken so far and next steps.