On the eve of the first anniversary of Scotland's declaration of a national housing emergency, and following publication of the latest housing statistics which revealed a 16.4% (3,984 homes) decrease in new housing supply in Scotland compared to the previous year, the Brodies Homes 2025 Conference brought together key stakeholders in the living sector to explore reasons for the decline in new homes of all tenures; the impacts that a lack of appropriate housing in the right places has on the economy; and actions and opportunities which can and should be taken to accelerate the delivery of more homes.
We opened the conference by asking those attending what they considered to be the main barrier to delivering more housing and the planning system was identified as the main culprit.
Mark Farmer of Cast Consultancy, and author of the Farmer Review, then delivered the keynote speech by highlighting the importance of housing growth to the economy and outlining what he believes to be the key barriers to strategic modernisation of the living sector and increased delivery. While these include the planning system, he cited skills shortages; viability and legislative uncertainty and stressed the need for an integrated housing, construction and skills strategy which invests in people and the process to create the long-term construction capacity which he saw as the key driver for delivering more homes of all tenures.
Mark set out some policy levers which could be used to reshape supply and smooth demand and stressed the need to resist the temptation for ‘big bang’ high impact changes rather than incremental change. The right things need to be done in the right order, but Mark highlighted that Scotland is well-placed to remove the obstacles to growth, leveraging existing advantages and learning from other jurisdictions.
Also stressing the importance of a well-functioning living sector to the economy, Clare Reid summarised the findings and recommendations of Prosper's Housing for a Growing Economy report which was launched at the conference. Brodies has been delighted to partner with Prosper, Homes for Scotland, BE-ST, Scottish National investment Bank and Wheatley Group on the preparation of the report which contains 23 recommendations to address the housing backlog. The recommendations fall into five baskets:
- prioritising the role of housing in driving growth;
- implementing ways to unlock rural housing and growth;
- creating certainty and developing new partnerships to deliver urban homes;
- working with industry to transform and modernise housebuilding; and
- collaborating to futureproof the workforce.
More information on the Prosper report can be found in Clare's guest blog here.
After Mark Farmer pointing out that planning policy is simply a set of rules which can be changed, the planning panel, comprising Pamela Clifford, Kevin Murphy, Catherine Wood and Stuart Salter, discussed some of the planning related themes from the Prosper report, such as should the presumption in favour of sustainable development be reintroduced; should there be an expedited process for bringing forward brownfield sites for housing; and would taking a light touch on site assessment requirements for smaller, allocated sites assist SME housebuilders? Read more about the planning panel session here.
Next up was a series of developer-led presentations showcasing developments at Buchanan Wharf and Sighthill, Glasgow where public/private sector collaboration has delivered exemplar residential developments at pace.
The second panel, made up of Graeme Bone, Makela Milne, Lindsay Lauder and Tim Metcalfe, explored whether developing new homes in Scotland is a real opportunity or not. Find out more about the developer panel session here.
Overall, the key messages from the conference included:
- housing should be seen as essential infrastructure as it drives the economy;
- the built environment must have greater priority in the Scottish Government's policy hierarchy;
- regulatory certainty is needed to encourage investment in the living sector;
- the construction sector is critical to delivering more homes, with the biggest challenge being workforce replacement rather than growth; and
- modern methods of construction must be embraced.
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