You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Scottish police and social landlords must be able to evict abusers to protect victims, CIH says
The Scottish Government must enable social landlords to work with the police to remove perpetrators of domestic abuse from their homes as part of its review of legislation designed to protect victims, the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) Scotland has said.
Responding to a consultation on domestic abuse, the CIH submitted evidence to the government in Holyrood which said that if someone is at risk of abuse, immediate action should be taken to stop the perpetrator from entering the home and gaining access to the victim, regardless of their tenure.
One way of achieving this would be to give police the power to issue an emergency barring order (EBO), which immediately prevents someone from entering a home, before making a longer-term application through the courts to protect a person at risk, CIH Scotland said.
In addition, victims should be able to approach the police to request that they use their powers to issue an EBO.
Social landlords should also be able to protect victims, the organisation said, and the government should review and update the laws to allow landlords to end a joint tenancy for one party, where that person has breached their tenancy through an act of domestic abuse.
READ MORE
However, the CIH also warned that any action to remove someone “is not in itself a complete response to domestic abuse” but should be the beginning of a process to develop a civil or criminal course of action.
Callum Chomczuk, a director at CIH Scotland, said: “We want to see further legislative change so that all social landlords have the option of legally and permanently removing abusers from their socially rented home so that victims are protected and perpetrators are held to account.
“Every year, thousands of people are affected by domestic abuse. Pain, control, coercion and degradation are needlessly and cruelly inflicted on women by the very person who claims to love – or have loved – them. And it is, primarily, women who experience and men who perpetrate domestic abuse.”
The CIH is currently running a campaign called Make a Stand which aims to improve the response of the housing sector to domestic violence.
Make a Stand
The ‘Make a Stand’ pledge has been developed by CIH in partnership with Women’s Aid and the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) – made up of Standing Together Against Domestic Violence, Peabody and Gentoo. It was launched under the CIH presidency of Alison Inman in 2018, and then continued by her successor as president Jim Strang.
As of 6 February 2018, 300 organisations had signed up.
As part of the pledge, housing organisations can make four commitments to support people who live and work in housing who are experiencing domestic abuse.
These four commitments are:
* To put in place and embed a policy to support residents who are experiencing domestic abuse
* To make information about national and local domestic abuse support services available on your website and in other places which are easily accessible to residents and staff
* To put in place a HR policy and procedure on domestic abuse, or to incorporate this into an existing policy, to support members of staff who are experiencing domestic abuse
* Appoint a champion in your organisation to own the activity you are doing to support people experiencing domestic abuse
Click here to read a piece by former CIH president Alison Inman explaining more about the campaign
