Scots Gov behind on its social housing targets
3 min read
SCOTS housing groups have called on the government to do more to stop a Scotland housing emergency.
According to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, only 55% of Scottish Government’s target for the building of social property could completed be on schedule,
The group revealed that there’s been slowdown in social new build output, in the briefing for its members.
The data illustrates that there were 3,000 social housing starts (the commencement of construction) in 2023, compared more than 7,000 from 2018.
GWSF director, David Bookbinder, said: “New build output has been falling for some time, because of higher costs but also a greater sense of hesitance from some housing associations and local authorities.
“What we needed to see in response to that was a spending boost, but we got an eye-wateringly big budget cut instead.
“Although building industry inflation can’t be blamed on the Scottish Government, this doesn’t justify Ministers’ capacity for denial about the impact of higher costs on the 110,000 homes target and that was before the budget cut.
“The target has been dead for some time and the funeral has come and gone. Continued implication by Ministers that it remains achievable isn’t helpful and certainly isn’t fooling the sector.
“Estimating many years ahead is clearly challenging, but if current trends continue, we may see around 42,000 new social homes rather than the promised 77,000 over the ten years to 2032.
“I really hope we’re proved wrong.
“In the meantime, despite the barriers, many of our members remain keen to work with their local authority partners to put new homes on the ground.
“This is still the most effective way of helping people out of the private rented sector and out of poverty.”
A Housing Emergency?
With almost 130,000 on waiting lists for social housing, a building slow down could seriously impact the availability of affordable housing in Scotland.
The GWSF’s findings echo with analysis released by Scottish Labour at the weekend which showed that 20,000 potential affordable homes have been lost over the first five years.
This comes in a week where the Resolution Foundation revealed that rent growth is outpacing earnings across the UK.
Compounded with the declining in stock of social property, there are concerns that Scotland could be sleep walking to (or is indeed in) a housing emergency.
The housing charity, Shelter Scotland, has called for the Scots Government to recognise the pertinence of the situation.
Alison Watson, Shelter Scotland director, said: “Now that the post-pandemic backlog has been cleared, we’re starting to see the consequences of a tightening housing budget.
“By every measure social housing delivery is slowing down drastically.
“Approvals and starts on social homes have been declining for years, and that trend continues in these figures. Given that, the drastic fall in completions was inevitable.
“These figures don’t even reflect the effects of the latest 26% cut to the housing budget which prompted widespread dismay across the housing sector.
“Just recently we’ve seen social homes in Aberdeen removed from the stock due to issues with RAAC and it’s likely that same scenario will happen elsewhere.
“Meanwhile, social landlords are struggling to bring older properties up to current standards so there’s a very real risk that soon Scotland will be losing more social homes than it builds.
“That’s a daunting prospect in the middle of a housing emergency and it’s why we’re calling on the Scottish Government to rapidly deliver an emergency action plan, which acknowledges the urgency of the situation and sets out an effective strategy to address it.”
