Councils across Scotland are wrestling with cuts to their funding on many fronts but the crisis facing homelessness services is particularly acute.

One major reason is a change to the funding of temporary accommodation.

Claimants of the new benefit Universal Credit will soon only be able to claim accommodation costs up to the so called Local Housing Allowance rate (LHA).

Councils will also get a £45 weekly management fee towards the additional cost of services for people waiting to be permanently rehoused.

But these rates are not likely to come anywhere near what councils or those delivering services for them have been charging.

For years, now, rates charged for temporary accommodation have been geared by councils so as to maximise the amount charged to housing benefit, which has helped ensure good quality services.

Rents of £190 to £250 per week are not uncommon. Last week, at the Annual Conference of housing charity Shelter, Tony Cain - whose organisation Alacho represents Scotland's chief housing officers - said he knew of cases where £400 per week had been charged. Concerns about a spiralling housing benefit bill were the reason for the Conservative cuts, of course.

There is no question good quality temporary housing, with additional services to help people in crisis costs more. But the high rates charged have significant side-effects. If someone is working, living in temporary accommodation is likely to be impossible, because the rents are so high. If someone is out of work in temporary accommodation - a young person for example - then they would have to be a fool to take up work unless they are walking into a job as a stockbroker. "We are all complicit in this funding arrangement," Mr Cain told the audience of housing managers, homelessness support workers and charity campaigners.

It is coming to an end though, and other issues such as the reduced benefit cap are likely to add to the problem, with many more Scottish households affected than before.

One speaker, Tracy Lindsay of South Lanarkshire council, suggested a range of ways the pressures on temporary housing could be mitigated. These included keeping rents high and managing the inevitable debts tenants get into, reclassifying more accommodation as women's 'refuges', locking off rooms to avoid the bedroom tax and a range of others, not all in keeping with the spirit of the law.

Mr Cain may be closer to what is needed though, when he calls for a restarting from scratch, redesigning a broken system, starting from scratch and having harder discusiosn sabout