Inverness homeless ‘good work’ threatened

The number of people declaring themselves homeless in Inverness has dropped by more than half, according to the Scottish government.

The government and Highland Council have credited the reduction to the work of a team of prevention officers established in June.

The officers work with landlords to find private lets.

However, councillor Margaret Davidson said changes to housing benefits threatened the team’s “good work”.

The housing and social work committee chairwoman said young people and families could be left without the finances to pay for private lets because of UK government welfare changes.

She told BBC Radio Scotland: “The difficulty we are seeing in the future, maybe 2013-14, is the changes to benefit regulations will mean that young people won’t be able to get the benefit to support a whole house.

“Larger families are being impacted by this and and there is huge uncertainty about how we continue to house those people because their benefits will be cut.”