GLASGOW’S homeless are being failed as they are spending too long in temporary accommodation.

New figures show some of the city’s most vulnerable spent more than four months in short-term living spaces after registering as homeless - a rise on the previous year.

Now, with the time limit deemed too long, housing watchdog the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) has said the council is “seriously failing” in its duty to provide adequate homelessness.

A spokeswoman for SHR said: “The reason we are engaging with the council is that it is failing to meet its statutory duty to provide temporary accommodation to every homeless person entitled to it. This is clearly a serious failing.

“The council is also taking too long in comes cases to give a suitable, settled home.

“There is no specific statutory timescale for moving people from temporary to settled accommodation.

“But this should be done as quickly as possible – taking into the account the unique needs of individual homeless people.”

When registered as homeless a person or a family will be assigned to live in temporary accommodation. They then move on to a settled home after one is found.

But the time spent by homeless people in temporary accommodation was 138 days between April 1 and December 31 2016.

This is an increase of 22 days compared to the period between April 1 2015 and March 31 2016.

Glasgow City Council figures also show that there were 3,536 households in temporary and emergency accommodation in 2016/17 compared to 4,785 the previous year.  The concerns from SHR were raised in a report by Audit Scotland which cited the city’s homelessness issue as top of its list of “risks”.

The SHR spokeswoman added: “The pace of change in Glasgow is slow. This relates both to the council’s performance providing temporary accommodation and suitable, settled homes.”

As part of a fix list calling on the new council administration to sort out some of the biggest issues affecting the city, the Evening Times called for an end to rough sleeping in Glasgow.

A recent summit on homelessness hosted by Glasgow City Council also identified that work must be done to improve the level of service to homeless people.

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: “We fully accept there are issues within the city’s homelessness system that need to be addressed and improvements made.

“The Scottish Housing Regulator has provided oversight of our homelessness services since their intervention in 2014.

“Since then progress has been made and there has been substantial reform to the way homelessness services are delivered in Glasgow. However, we accept that difficulties remain, particularly in relation to people accessing permanent housing.”  SHR have been involved in reviewing the council’s homelessness services for the last three years.