TWO, half-day seminars being held by Shelter Scotland will throw the spotlight on prevention of homelessness and explain the implications of housing benefit cuts.
The seminars will be held on Tuesday 30 November, 2010 in Edinburgh, at St Paul’s and St George’s Church, featuring a range of expert speakers.
Begins a spokesperson: “The first seminar will focus on helping prevent homelessness by looking at how the housing sector can take a proactive approach to managing rent arrears and, ultimately, reduce the number of people being evicted from their homes.
“The second seminar will examine current and future cuts to housing benefit and the key issues for local authorities, social and private landlords and the voluntary sector. This comes at a time when Shelter Scotland analysis recently showed people in Scotland on local housing allowance will have to find an extra £56 a month to pay their rent (2).”
Gordon MacRae, head of Communications and Policy, Shelter Scotland, the housing and homelessness charity, said:
“These seminars are unmissable for housing professionals and will provide useful insight into how to prevent homelessness from experts in the housing sector.
“Not only does preventing homelessness help families avoid the nightmare of losing their home, it also has a crucial role to play to help Scotland keep its commitment to end homelessness by 2012.
“Ultimately, stopping people becoming homeless in the first place is also cost effective for local authorities and housing associations in the long run.”
Shelter Scotland’s three half-day seminars on homelessness prevention kick off on Tuesday 30 November at St Paul’s and St George’s Church in Edinburgh.
The first seminar is ‘Preventing Evictions for Rent Arrears’ from 9am until 12.30pm.
The second seminar is ‘Understanding Changes to Housing Benefit’ from 1pm until 4pm. A third seminar, ‘Effective tenancy sustainment’ will be held in Glasgow on the morning of the 20 January 2011.
For more details and to book your place, go to http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/events
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Notes to Editors:
1. Shelter Scotland, the housing and homelessness charity. Shelter Scotland believes that everyone should have a home. We help people find and keep a home. We campaign for decent housing for all.
2. The Scottish Government published figures after the June 22 Budget that illustrated the potential effect of the introduction of the 30th percentile on Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates, which were announced in the June 2010 Emergency Budget. All figures are based on the Local Housing Allowance for an average three-bedroom property. All figures are based on data used to produce the July 2010 LHA rates. This figure are calculated from indicative figures and are therefore not statements of fact. The figure for Scotland are calculated by taking an average across all areas for an average three-bedroom property.
3. Spokespeople are available for interview, telephone the media office on 0844 515 2442. An ISDN line number is available for broadcast interviews.
4. For more information about Shelter Scotland visit www.shelter.org.uk
5. Follow Shelter Scotland on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/shelterinscotland
Twitter – http://twitter.com/shelterscotland.
MEDIA RELEASE posted by Shelter Scotland. You too can post media releases (aka press releases) on allmediascotland.com. For more information, email here.
Contact: Neil Baldwin, Nicola Baxter
Phone: 0844 515 2442
Website: http://www.shelter.org.uk
