Welcome to the guidance on preparing Local Housing Strategies
1.1 This guidance has been produced to assist local authorities and others in the development of Local Housing Strategies (LHS). The guidance is web-based enabling it to link to a number of supplementary documents and external websites. A printable version of the guidance is available (although this does not include the information contained in the web links). The web-based format of this guidance enables it to be updated to reflect changes at a national level, experience from the first round of LHS submissions and new data and research. Comments received from users of the draft guidance informed revised versions. Please continue to let us know what you think of the guidance and to provide suggestions on how it could be improved in the future.
1.2 Section 89 of The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 requires local authorities to undertake a comprehensive assessment of housing needs and conditions, and to produce strategies to tackle the housing problems in their areas. These strategies should include plans to eradicate fuel poverty. In addition, authorities must have regard to the long-term supply of appropriately trained construction and labour within their areas. Local authorities must also ensure that their strategies encourage equal opportunities and in particular the observance of the equal opportunity requirements.
1.3 This guidance has been prepared primarily for local authorities, but will also be of interest to those who will be working with councils in preparing strategies such as Registered Social Landlords (RSLs), private house builders, public and voluntary sector agencies and local communities.
1.4 The guidance:
Is produced by the Scottish Executive working with COSLA;
Draws on the report prepared by a sub-group of the multi-agency Housing Interests Group in December 2000. You can view the report here;
Has benefited from the first round of LHS submissions involving all 32 local authorities in Scotland during 2003-2004.
1.5 We want to harness knowledge and achieve maximum learning for LHS. Using web-based guidance:
You can access additional information quickly through links to other web-sites and supporting reports;
If you tell us about your experience and practice we can arrange for it to be shared, and help others to learn from experience elsewhere;
We can continually improve the guidance, by refining it, refreshing good practice examples and including new information.
1.6 This guidance draws on "Designing Local Housing Strategies: A Good Practice Guide" (1998) written by Sue Goss and Bob Blackaby. Some text is reproduced in the guidance and we are grateful for the permission of the publishers, the Chartered Institute of Housing and the Local Government Association to do so. View the text quoted by clicking on the following pages. For a copy of the book, contact the CIH at (02476) 851700 or e-mail pubs@cih.org.
Practical support and advice from Communities Scotland
1.7 Planning teams in Communities Scotland network of area offices can provide advice, support and guidance to local authorities in producing their LHS. Contact details are available.
