AROUND 30,000 children in Scotland are living in poverty as a direct result of the cost of privately rented housing, according to analysis from a new research group set up by SNP members.

In its latest paper, the Progressive Policy Research Group warns the Scottish Government that it’ll struggle to meet child poverty targets unless more is done to help renters.

With the private rented sector being heavily subsidised by the Department of Work and Pensions – a 2013 estimate showed that 33% of the UK’s Housing Benefit expenditure in 2010/11 was due to real-terms growth in private rents – they argue that tougher rent controls could lead to a significant reduction in the amount spent on welfare.

This, it adds, could ultimately mean “a fiscal boost for an independent Scotland”.

Four years ago, the Scottish Government introduced rent pressure zones (RPZ), allowing local authorities to introduce a cap on increases in certain areas if rents were rising too much, causing problems for the tenants and the council was “under pressure to provide housing or subsidise the cost of housing as a result”.

However, none of Scotland’s 32 local authorities has managed to establish an RPZ, with campaigners saying the huge amount of evidence needed to be provided by councils, and a lack of comprehensive rent level data, makes it impossible for them to be implemented.

In their paper, the PPRG points out that the Scottish Government is far from reaching ambitious targets for reducing child poverty by the end of the decade.

“Across all targets, most recently available poverty levels stand at more than double the 2030 targets. Absolute child poverty stands at 20% (2018- 19), four times as high as the 5% 2030 target.”

They also point out that 41% of children living in privately rented accommodation are in what’s known as After Housing Cost poverty, compared to 24% across all housing tenures.

Despite accounting for only 15% of all households, a quarter of all children living in poverty in Scotland live in the private rented sector.

The PPRG group is also sceptical of the Scottish Government’s focus on building more houses.

“Increasing housing supply is important. It does not, however, have a neatly defined relationship with housing cost, which is impacted by a variety of factors, including mortgage availability, interest rates, land values and the use of existing properties for alternative use, such as Airbnbs,” it said.

The group claims that at “a Scotland-wide level it is simply not the case that there is a shortage of housing”. It adds: “If the supply of housing were the most important factor, we would be justified in asking why the problem exists at all.

“The number of dwellings in Scotland is at a record high, at over 2.6 million, amounting to one house for every 2.07 Scots – also a record, even while Scotland’s population grows.

“While this can partly be attributed to the trend towards smaller households, the ratio of dwellings to households in 2019 was 1.064, indicating healthy levels of supply.

“Between 2010 and 2019, the ratio of dwellings to households has remained steady, climbing slightly from 1.0581 to 1.0644. Yet over that time rents across Scotland have outstripped inflation”.

The analysis suggests that had RPZs been in place between 2014 and 2019 they would have reduced the median rent for a three-bedroom house in Greater Glasgow by around £160-£170 per month from £950 in 2019 and for the Lothians by around £300 per month from £1350.

This, they say, “would have the potential to lift up to 13,000 children out of poverty, which would equate to a drop of 1% in the national child poverty rate.”