Nearly 10,000 council houses in Scotland lie empty despite child homelessness soaring

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Scotland has nearly 10,000 empty council houses - enough to end the child homelessness epidemic.Edinburgh council alone has 1,231 vacant homes after declaring a housing emergency.Ewan Aitken, of homelessness charity Cyrenians, said: “Void properties are a real waste of public resources and it is tragic we got into this mess in the first place.”The SNP/Green Government is under huge pressure over a near £200m cut to the affordable housing budget at a time of rising homelessness.Recent figures show 20,144 applications for homelessness assistance and 9,860 children in temporary accommodation - an eight per cent rise.But although the Scottish Government is bearing the brunt of criticism, councils are also facing questions about their spare capacity.

The Record asked all local authorities for the number of ‘voids’ they had last month - unoccupied council houses.Voids can be permanent homes waiting to be re-let, as well as temporary accommodation or houses earmarked for demolition and major works.Thirty councils provided a response and 9,766 voids were identified.Aberdeen council said they had 2,405 voids - the largest number provided by any town hall.Edinburgh was in second place, followed by Renfrewshire on 1137 properties and 542 in Dundee.Renfrewhire said 616 of the voids are marked for demolition or sale as part of their regeneration plans.

Aberdeenshire recorded 411 voids, Angus Council said they had 316, East Ayrshire came back with 276 and East Lothian had 201.Falkirk’s figure was 350, Fife council said they had 322 voids and the figure for North Lanarkshire was 335.Other council areas have external housing providers as a result of stock being transferred from the council.Wheatley Homes, the biggest provider in