With rural Scotland in the midst of a housing crisis, there was outrage when it was revealed in December 2024 that only 17 homes had been approved in the previous year under the £25 million Rural Affordable Homes for Key Workers Fund. The Fund was set up by the Scottish Government to enable the purchase of properties, including empty houses, for key workers and others in rural and island areas who need affordable housing. The Housing Minister stressed that in the context of the national housing emergency, providing people in rural and island areas with access to high quality affordable and market housing to enable them to live, work and thrive remains a key area of focus.
With 98% of Scotland classified as rural, two recently published reports which have identified potential solutions to the rural housing crisis may assist the Scottish Government in achieving its aims .
In its Land Supply for rural housing proposal, the Scottish Land Commission is urging public bodies to have a stronger role in providing a pipeline of land for housing in rural communities by using their existing powers to buy, sell and hold land.
This would have to be supported by a large-scale capital fund that can reuse money from land sales to keep the programme running and reinvesting.
Public landowners should be required to review their land and identify sites that could be used for rural housing, with better guidance and support for public bodies to release land for housing at effective prices to unlock development. Existing compulsory purchase legislation should also be updated to make it easier to use when needed.
In areas with potential for economic growth or where populations are declining, there should be public support for the preparation of Local Place Plans which are informed by a local housing need and demand assessment or equivalent rather than the current methodology for regional Housing Needs and Demand Assessments which rely on historic data rather than identifying future demand.
The full report can be found here.
The Planning, Infrastructure and Place Advisory Group (PIPAG), which was set up by the Scottish Government to support the implementation of National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4), has just published its first annual report summarising its first year of activities and outputs. Recognising that rural housing can be transformational to rural areas, PIPAG considered issues of rural housing as a form of infrastructure to support major developments and a green transition.
The Group identified effective localised solutions which are already in practice in various rural areas, with examples of co-ordinated approaches to legacy investment, including pooling of infrastructure funds for community benefit (including housing).
Increasing efficiencies to expediate the planning process was also highlighted as a solution to the rural housing crisis, with Masterplan Consent Areas providing an opportunity to simplify consents.
Public-private partnerships could also create efficiencies and provide better co-ordination of resources which would lead to social, economic and environmental benefits. The Group suggested that this could be analysed further to establish a model to better maximise the legacy potential of developments.
As Scottish Land & Estates said after appearing before the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on the Housing (Scotland) Bill, increasing housing availability is key to solving Scotland’s rural housing crisis.
Both reports indicate that there are existing powers, functions and public/private partnerships which could be used to deliver more homes more quickly. It's time to use them.
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