CCPS Home » HSEU Home » Information » HSEU Research into Funding of Housing Support

Management of Housing Support Funding by Local Authorities: Information Collated in July 2008

The Unit has contacted each local authority in Scotland to find out how they are managing their funding for housing support in 2008/09.

Currently all local authority areas have a main contact who can discuss matters to do with housing support. However, Aberdeenshire, East Ayrshire and Shetland have all set in motion plans to disband their SP teams and other areas such as Fife have different contacts for different types of service. This means that in future housing support may not be seen as a distinct branch of social care and it will be much more difficult to track where the former SP budget has gone.

• 20 local authority areas have maintained a single budget for housing support in 2008/09. Of these:
• 6 have their funding for housing support as a single budget within their total social work budget
• 4 believe that the funding for housing support will be disaggregated in 2009/10
• 2 mentioned a high degree of uncertainty about what was happening to former SP money in their area.
• 12 local authority areas have mainstreamed funding for housing support - generally distributing it between housing, homelessness and social work. Of these, 7 had mainstreamed their SP budget before the announcement of the removal of the ring fence which means that there has been no change in their management of their budget in 2008/09.

A table outling Local Authority Management of Housing Support Funding for each local authority area  has been collated.