With the Scottish Parliament due to debate housing, there’s concern at the latest figures which show that the number of new homes fell by 14% in Scotland in the year to June. In total, some 13,478 homes were built, with the drop seen across the board — new social homes, private sector homes and housing association homes were all down when compared with the previous 12 months.
Margaret Burgess MSP
Target still on track
According to the Housing Minister, Margaret Burgess, housing remained a high priority for the government. She said that 16,000 affordable homes had been created since 2011 and insisted that the latest figures showed that it was “on track to delivering our commitment of 30,000 affordable homes during the lifetime of this Parliament. However,” she added, “they also underline the continued negative impact that challenging global economic conditions and Westminster’s cuts to our capital budget have had on house building activity in Scotland.”
In the view of Scottish Labour’s housing spokeswoman, Mary Fee, Scotland was facing a housing crisis entirely of the SNP’s making. “They have slashed capital spend on housing,” she said, “obliterated grants for housing associations and failed to fully mitigate against the impact of the bedroom tax which is having a devastating impact on social landlords.
“It’s time for the SNP to make housing a priority before this crisis spins out of control, we want to see a comprehensive and ambitious housing plan that takes Scotland off pause and provides support for house builders and social landlords to build new homes. Anything less is just not enough.”In response to Ms Burgess, Liberal Democrat housing spokesman Jim Hume said: “The housing minister cannot duck the facts. Since the SNP government came to office it has slashed the capital housing budget by 29%.
Vaughan Hart
MD, Scottish Building Federation
The industry too reacted to the news. Philip Hogg, Chief Executive of industry body Homes for Scotland, described the figures as “obviously disappointing but not a surprise with the continuing drop in output now stretching five years. However, there is a significant time lapse in these statistics and other more up-to-date indictors signal a more positive situation. Taking these together with the recent introduction of the Help to Buy (Scotland) shared equity scheme, which is already making a big impact, we now need to ensure that this increased activity in the housing market is sustained in order that it translates into the building of much needed new homes – across all tenures.”
The Managing Director of the Scottish Building Federation, Vaughan Hart, added that the latest statistics illustrated “continued challenges for house-building and the wider construction industry. The number of new public sector homes being completed is not necessarily an indicator of reduced investment. It reflects a renewed focus on improved quality which is to be welcomed. Conversely, private sector activity remains slow, with less than 10,000 units completed during the year to June. This points to the importance of sustaining initiatives such as Help to Buy so they can start having a real and positive impact on the industry.”
On behalf of the social housing sector, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations called for action to get the affordable housing programme back on track. Its policy manager, Susan Torrance, said that they’d “identified the downward trend in completions of new homes and more worryingly, starts on site from 2011 onwards.” She went on to point out that getting the affordable housing supply programme back on track would be “no easy matter and not helped by the difficulties in raising private finance to complement the subsidy levels. The early signs of recovery in the private market also means that new sites will be hard to come by. We need all our local authority partners, other agencies and funders to work with housing associations to maximise resources and get Scotland building new affordable social housing “