FEWER families in Scotland are becoming homeless and fewer children are living in temporary accommodation, according to official statistics.
There were 8007 homelessness applications between October and December 2013, 10% less than the same quarter of 2012.
The number of families living in temporary accommodation has also dropped to its lowest level for five years.
Families in temporary accommodation fell by 3% during the year from 10,252 to 9963. Of these, 2456 were households with children, 20% lower than in 2012.
Graeme Brown, director of charity Shelter Scotland, said the figures were "good news" testament to the "hard work of teams of local housing officers" across the country.
But he added: "Despite Scotland's progressive legislation on homelessness, it is still too high and we cannot afford to be complacent or lose sight of the fact that 6635 households found themselves homeless in just three months.
"We now wait to see the Scottish Housing Regulator's report into the impact new approaches such as housing options are having on homelessness prevention."
Housing Minister Margaret Burgess said: "The Scottish Government is committed to supporting people of all ages who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
"We have worked hard with local authorities to develop services in which staff assist households to consider options and address their individual needs in order to help prevent homelessness before it occurs.
"Alongside this we are increasing the supply of affordable housing to ensure settled accommodation is available to households as quickly as possible to reduce time spent in temporary accommodation.
"Today's figures demonstrate that this is working."
Despite raising fears that Westminster's welfare reforms may undermine this progress, she said the Scottish Government was committed to delivering at least 30,000 affordable homes - 20,000 for social rent - during this parliament.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article