Scotland’s Temporary Housing Record Is a Growing Backlog

Scotland had 19,004 households in temporary accommodation on 31 March 2026, the highest count in the official series. Those placements held 10,715 children, up 5% in a year and more than double the 2015 figure of 5,223.

New homelessness applications barely moved. The rise is a queue that is not clearing, while social building posted its weakest year since 2016-17 and a new delivery agency does not open until April 2027.

The Record Is a Backlog of Open Cases

Accredited statistics for 2025-26, published on 22 September 2026, show 41,443 homelessness applications, 197 more than the 41,246 logged in 2024-25, a 0% change. Households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness numbered 35,002, up 346, or 1%.

The live caseload tells a different arithmetic. Open homelessness cases stood at 34,964 on 31 March 2026, up 10% from 31,873 a year earlier. Households in temporary accommodation rose by the same 10%, from 17,240 to 19,004. Children in those rooms rose from 10,180 to 10,715.

SCOTLAND HOMELESSNESS COUNTS, TWO YEARS

Among households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness there were 39,420 adults and 14,442 children, a different count from the 10,715 children in the temporary-housing snapshot. Seventy-one per cent of assessed households were single person. Twenty-four per cent contained children. Half had at least one support need.

Closed cases still found a way out. Eighty-three per cent of households assessed as unintentionally homeless secured settled housing, the same share as a year earlier. Average time from assessment to closure was 277 days, four days shorter than 281 in 2024-25. The stock rose anyway, because more cases stayed open than left.

Councils Logged 21,800 Failures to Offer a Roof

The legal duty is to offer temporary housing while a claim is assessed, then again while settled housing is found. In 2025-26 there were 21,800 instances where temporary accommodation was not offered, up from 16,460.

That is the part of the crisis that never becomes a bed-night. In the six months to 30 September 2025, Glasgow alone accounted for 6,815 of 10,710 such instances. The full-year total is higher still. Rough sleeping reports moved with the same pressure: 2,949 households said someone had slept rough the night before they applied, up from 2,464, and 4,115 reported rough sleeping in the three months prior, up from 3,579.

Where a room was offered, the Unsuitable Accommodation Order still bit. The order, extended to all homeless households in May 2020, caps stays in B&Bs, hotels and similar rooms at seven days except in narrow emergencies. Councils recorded 7,760 breaches in 2025-26, slightly fewer than 7,810 the year before, and still thousands of illegal stays.

WHAT COUNTS AS UNSUITABLE AFTER SEVEN DAYS

• No 24-hour access: A curfew, or any rule that the household must leave the room for part of the day, fails the test.
• No private bathroom: The household needs a toilet and a bath or shower for its exclusive use.
• No kitchen or living room: Cooking facilities and a living room must be available, even if they are shared.
• Wrong size or place: Too few bedrooms, or a placement that breaks travel to work, school or health services, also fails.

Closed cases spent an average of 237 days in temporary housing, three days less than in 2024-25. Cases still open had already spent 325 days. The seven-day limit on unsuitable rooms is a legal ceiling on the worst stock, not a typical stay. Households with children, and those with open cases, spend longer than the rest.

Children Hit a Record Three Weeks After the Pledge

On 1 September 2026, First Minister John Swinney set out the Programme for Government 2026 to 2031. It promised to help people off the streets and to end the use of unsafe and harmful temporary accommodation for children. Twenty-one days later the 2025-26 bulletin landed with 10,715 children still in those rooms on 31 March.

Gordon Llewellyn-MacRae, interim director at Shelter Scotland, tied the record to a decade of under-building and to councils already turning people away.

Local authorities are under extreme pressure and are unlawfully turning people away who have a right to housing. That pressure is resulting in housing being weaponised with calls to roll back rights. It is utterly unacceptable.

Gordon Llewellyn-MacRae, interim director, Shelter Scotland

He called the pledge welcome and said promises mean nothing without action. He also asked ministers to point the new development body, More Homes Scotland, at social housing. Richard Meade, chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, called a rising child count “simply intolerable” and said the government was behind on its 110,000 affordable-homes target for 2032.

Shirley-Anne Somerville, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing, said the latest figures “remain far too high”. She pointed to a shift from crisis management toward prevention and rapid rehousing, a £50 million Homelessness Prevention Fund, 1,500 Housing First tenancies over five years, and up to £4.9 billion for affordable homes in this parliament, including a stated £4.1 billion of public money, to support 36,000 affordable homes.

The programme repeats a longer record: 146,034 affordable homes since 2007, including 104,451 for social rent, with supply per 10,000 people put at 45% higher than in England and 69% higher than in Wales. Those completions have not shortened the queue now on the books.

How Far Behind Is Social Housing Delivery?

Housing statistics to the end of March 2026 show 17,268 new homes completed in 2025-26, down 10%, or 1,914 homes, from 2024-25. Starts fell 4% to 14,955. Aside from 2020-21, when Covid-19 stopped sites, all-sector completions were the lowest since 2016-17. Starts were the lowest since 2012-13, and 23% below the Covid year.

The social sector, councils and housing associations together, completed 3,774 homes, down 16%, or 697, and the lowest since 2016-17. That was 22% of all completions. Housing associations finished 2,255; local authorities finished 1,519. Five councils built no social-sector homes at all: Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, East Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire and the Shetland Islands.

Starts in the social sector did turn. They rose 25%, or 790 homes, to 3,937. Affordable Housing Supply Programme approvals jumped 42% to 6,787 and starts 37% to 7,421, while completions fell 8% to 6,832. Of those completions, 5,388, or 79%, were for social rent. The pipeline is filling after a thin year. It has not yet produced the lets that would empty temporary rooms.

The 2032 target remains 110,000 affordable homes, at least 70% for social rent and 10% in rural and island communities. By the end of March 2026, 35,368 affordable homes had been counted toward that target. Homeless Network Scotland has put the social-home need at 15,693 a year. Last year’s social-sector completions were 3,774.

Edinburgh’s Rate and Glasgow’s Caseload

Pressure is not even. Edinburgh had the highest rate of temporary accommodation use, at 74 households per 10,000. Glasgow City had 223 households per 10,000 assessed as homeless. Official snapshot counts for each council are collected each March under the homeless persons legislation.

In the six months to 30 September 2025, Edinburgh’s open caseload rose by 1,203, from 7,441 to 8,644, the largest numerical increase in Scotland. Edinburgh and Glasgow also posted the largest rises in temporary placements in that half year, 690 and 642, each 17%. Applications from households granted refugee or leave-to-remain status were concentrated in the same two cities: 1,700 in Glasgow, 44% of that council’s applications, and 655 in Edinburgh, 33%.

Llewellyn-MacRae said Glasgow needs a national response and investment from both the Scottish and UK governments until the asylum backlog declines. Council officials have blamed a Home Office clearance of that backlog for extra demand. The 2025-26 national bulletin itself records a fall in applications from British, EU, EEA or Swiss citizens and a rise for other eligible groups, including refugees and people with leave to remain.

The wait list is the daily form of the 34,964 open cases. A man filmed with nothing still to his name, waiting on an offer, is not an outlier in a system that failed to offer temporary housing 21,800 times. Holyrood’s 22 September sitting, the day the bulletin was released, was taken up with an independence debate rather than the housing figures.

More Homes Scotland Does Not Open Until 2027

Ministers’ supply answer is a new national housing agency. More Homes Scotland is to be phased in from 1 April 2027, pulling funding, expertise and delivery tools under one roof, with a planned partnership with the Scottish National Investment Bank to bring in private capital across social housing, affordable housing and build-to-rent.

Until then the same councils that logged the 21,800 failed offers will keep running the duty. Rapid-rehousing money, the prevention fund, and Housing First tenancies are already in the programme. None of them is a 2026 completion figure large enough to cut 19,004 households, or 10,715 children, out of temporary rooms.

FROM THE 2015 BASELINE TO THE 2027 AGENCY

1. 2015: 5,223 children are in temporary accommodation, the baseline the 2026 count more than doubles.
2. May 2020: The Unsuitable Accommodation Order is extended to all homeless households, with a seven-day cap on B&Bs and similar rooms.
3. 30 September 2025: 18,092 households and 10,480 children are in temporary accommodation, already series highs at the half year.
4. 31 March 2026: The year closes at 19,004 households and 10,715 children, both records, after 3,774 social-sector completions.
5. 1 September 2026: The Programme for Government pledges to end unsafe and harmful temporary accommodation for children and to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032.
6. 22 September 2026: The 2025-26 homelessness statistics are published.
7. 1 April 2027: More Homes Scotland is due to start operating.

The 237-day average stay for closed cases is already a school year in all but name. The agency that is supposed to build a way out of that average does not open for another six months after the record was posted, and the first homes it backs will take longer still.

On 31 March 2026 the snapshot was 19,004 households and 10,715 children. Applications that year rose by 197. The rest is a system that cannot discharge the people already in it.