Yesterday John Swinney delivered his first Programme for Government since becoming First Minister – 24 hours after Shona Robison, Finance Secretary, announced approximately £500 million of cuts.
Entitled Serving Scotland, the programme focuses on 4 key priorities:
- eradicating child poverty
- growing the economy
- tackling the climate emergency
- ensuring high quality and sustainable public services
The programme recognises that having a warm, safe, place to call home is the foundation of family life and a direct contributor to tackling poverty and advises that the Scottish Government's approach to tackling the housing emergency will increase the right mix of housing supply, in the right place – ensuring families have secure and affordable homes that meet their needs while helping to boost economic growth.
As part of addressing this priority, the programme espouses an intention to "deliver homes at pace and scale" and reduce the number of households and children in temporary accommodation through:
- investing nearly £600 million in affordable housing in 2024-25, with the majority directed at increasing social housing supply and £40 million thereof being used to acquire existing homes (including long term voids) to bring them into affordable use;
- committing £100 million to supporting the construction of around 2800 mid-market rent homes and seeking institutional investment to increase the funding to £500 million;
- providing £2 million to local authorities facing the most significant and sustained temporary accommodation pressures to maximise the use of existing housing stock and minimise turnaround time for vacant social homes;
- working with local authorities and RSLs on effective void management and vacant property refurbishment to increase the supply of available affordable and social homes;
- updating guidance on encouraging councils to focus on homes which have been empty longer than 12 months, linked to modernising the compulsory purchase system to help get empty properties back into productive use;
- working with local authorities to accelerate development of strategic sites to unlock opportunities for investment and economic growth and provision of new homes of all tenures;
- ensuring the planning system responds to the housing emergency and supporting planning authorities in allocating a pipeline of land for new homes and promote consistent monitoring of its delivery;
- extending the services offered by the proposed Planning Hub to support housing developments, such as focusing on the delivery of homes on larger, legacy and stalled sites; and
- accelerating progress of on cladding, delivering assessment, risk mitigation and remediation measures in affected properties on a priority basis;
Although listed under the priority of growing the economy, the following initiatives should also have a positive impact on the delivery of more homes:
- support for early adopters of Masterplan Consent Areas;
- a planning apprenticeship programme to invest in new talent to create a pipeline of skilled future planners;
advancing the community wealth building model through a Community Wealth Building Bill and developing a local authority led practice network to aid consistency and practice sharing.
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