Elected Member Briefing - Annual homelessness statistics

About this Briefing Note

Report by: Elaine Ritchie, Strategic Lead, Housing and Communities

EMBN Number: 114-25 

Date: 16 September 2025

Subject: Annual homelessness statistics

Details

Purpose

This briefing provides the latest information on homelessness in Perth and Kinross, following the publication of the annual homelessness statistics by the Scottish Government.

Briefing information

The Scottish Government published Homelessness in Scotland 2024-25 statistics on September 16th 2025. Homelessness Perth and Kinross Perth & Kinross Council has been consistently recognised as one of the best performing local authorities in Scotland in terms of delivering homelessness services. The Scottish Government's data confirms that the Council continued to deliver sector-leading outcomes for people experiencing homelessness in the latest reporting year.

The Scottish Government declared a national 'housing emergency' in May 2024 and several local authorities have individually declared housing emergencies. Whilst Perth & Kinross Council has not declared a housing emergency, the housing landscape is extremely challenging with a complex mix of supply and demand pressures and socio-economic factors driving an increase in the proportion of people whose only realistic housing option is social housing.

The position with homelessness presentations in Perth and Kinross is stable, which is a positive sign. The year-to-date position saw a very slight increase in presentations compared to the same period last year (860, +4 presentations).

Perth & Kinross, along with Inverclyde, recorded the shortest average time to process homelessness applications, at 10 days. The national average is 18 days.

The proportion of people presenting as homeless who require temporary accommodation was higher than the previous year. This has made it extremely challenging to manage temporary accommodation and, whilst Perth and Kinross Council has not breached its statutory duties, temporary accommodation has been at capacity most of the time.

Despite the pressures we continue to face, our Home First approach has ensured that the requirement for temporary accommodation has been minimised and those requiring temporary accommodation have experienced an average length of stay of 79 days, compared with a national average of 226 days. This is the second-best performance in Scotland. Our overall average duration of homelessness in Perth and Kinross is also amongst the shortest in Scotland at 85 days against a national average of 280 days.

In response to the challenges mentioned above, we implemented an action plan to further develop our work to prevent homelessness, to increase affordable housing supply and to ensure continuous availability of temporary accommodation. This includes:

• Accelerating new-build development where possible and increasing the number of ex-Council properties we buy-back.
• Additional resources have been deployed to focus on the prevention of homelessness.
• A Private-Sector Tenancy Sustainment Fund has been created to provide intervention options to prevent private-sector tenants becoming homeless.
• We are operating our Buy-Back scheme more flexibly providing opportunities to purchase properties with sitting tenants and/or properties that were not previously owned by the Council.
• A downsizing scheme has been developed to incentivise existing PKC tenants who are under-occupying their properties to move to smaller accommodation, releasing larger properties for re-let.
• We implemented a short-term refocus of staffing operations to ensure that void properties and buy-backs are brought on stream for new tenants as quickly as possible.

Conclusion

Despite the challenges, we remain in a strong position in Perth & Kinross compared to most other local authorities. We are complying with all of our statutory duties including the Unsuitable Accommodation Order which we have not breached since 2008. The day-to-day experience for staff dealing with homelessness and temporary accommodation remains complex and challenging, but the outcomes that are being delivered for people experiencing homelessness remain positive in a national context. The table below shows our 2024/25 performance along with our year-to date performance up to 16 September 2025: