Stark findings on Scotland’s mounting social housing crisis require the urgent attention of SNP ministers. The Solace report, by council chiefs, warns the country faces an “emergency” situation and a “critical lack of capacity”.
Staggeringly, nearly 250,000 people in Scotland are on waiting lists for a council house – but only 26,000 were allocated one last year. It’s a shocking dereliction of duty that we have enough people to fill Hampden Park more than four times over left in cruel housing limbo.
This is an unsustainable position, as the report points out, and without action we face a growing homelessness crisis. What’s gone wrong, of course, is an alarming shortfall of available, affordable homes.
The study estimates at least 125,000 properties are needed to meet current levels of demand. However, since 2022 just 18,583 new affordable houses have been delivered, with supply falling by a fifth in the last three years.
Solace Scotland has demanded a “whole system transformation” of our social housing and homelessness services. This crisis should perhaps come as no surprise when the Holyrood government has spent years cutting council funding.
But the consequences are distressing. Nearly a third of councils say they’re unable to meet statutory obligations to provide suitable temporary accommodation.
There were nearly 30,000 homelessness applications still open as of the end of September. This is intolerable. The Scottish Government must rapidly get their act together and put their house in order.
Queue shocker
Every NHS patient in Scotland who needs treatment has been given a guaranteed wait time of just 12 weeks under the Treatment Time Guarantee. So, the revelation that one patient has had to wait almost seven years is a scandal.
Last year, then health secretary Humza Yousaf pledged to tackle the waiting times crisis and promised that, by September 2022, anyone waiting longer than two years in most specialities would be seen.
However, latest figures uncovered by the Scottish Lib Dems show this target is not being met. At least one other patient is still waiting almost five years after they were told they required treatment, with others waiting more than three or four years.
Health Secretary Michael Matheson is under increasing pressure to sort out the chaos in the NHS and this latest report will do nothing to convince us recovery is on the way.
The longer patients wait for treatment, the greater the chance of their condition deteriorating and that is not acceptable. Patients are fed up of excuses, they want action now to end their suffering.
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