ON May 15, the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Government, declared a housing emergency. Unfortunately, neither indicated what actions equal to that description of the crisis facing many thousands of Scottish families were now to be undertaken.
The Scottish Government should immediately reverse its recent £275 million cuts to the housing budget by re-allocating resources from lower priority budgets and restore its annual housing budget back to £800m a year. It’s time for Scotland to follow suit. Our aim should be to deliver an additional 100,000 new houses for rent to be funded by the pension funds over the next five years.
Failure to do so would destroy any chance of reaching the existing targets for new housebuilding, let alone a new target of 200,000 houses over the next five years. At present the Housing Minister is not a member of the Scottish Cabinet. His boss is the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, who has a wide range of portfolio responsibilities including social security.
Other measures the Scottish Government needs to take include rewriting its proposed new Housing Bill so that it incentivises, not penalises, investment in new housebuilding while protecting tenants from unwarranted increases in rents; speeding up and simplifying the compulsory purchase system for acquiring land needed for new housing developments; speeding up and simplifying the planning system to facilitate new housebuilding projects; and taking urgent steps to stop landowners charging grossly...