13-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
New housebuilding hits five year Scottish low in housing emergency
Some 20,364 new houses became available in Scotland in 2023/24 - the lowest number outside the Covid pandemic year of 2020/21 since 2018/19.
It comes as the number of homes completed under the Affordable Housing Supply Programme has slumped to 8,180 in 2024, again the lowest outside the pandemic year of 2020/21 since 2018.
And the number of housing association new homes, typically aimed at the affordable market has dropped from 5,020 in 2022/23 to 3,378 in 2023/24. In the pre-pandemic year of 2018/19 there were 4086 new homes.
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The Scottish Government officially declared a national housing emergency in May last year, after a number of local authorities had already done so.
Housing minister Paul McLennan said he recognised these are "exceptionally challenging times" but accentuated the positives, saying that affordable housing starts and approvals have "increased" in the year to December 2024.
Approvals went from 6,191 in 2023 to 6,440 in 2024 while starts rose from 6247 to 6501.
But the number of approvals in 2024 is still almost half that agreed in the pre-pandemic years of 2018 when there were 12,478 agreements in place and in 2019 when there were 11,885.
Mr McLennan said that the Scottish Government would "continue to work with partners to increase these levels even further".
It comes after the First Minister John Swinney was asked to intervene as numbers sleeping rough on the streets of Scotland's biggest city while seeking official help has tripled in the space of just over a year while a key night shelter operated by Homeless Project Scotland faced closure.
The number of households officially reporting that they had slept rough in the three months before they sought homeless help in Glasgow shot up from an average of 28 a month in 2022/23, before the city declared a housing emergency to 86-a-month in the first 11 months of 2024 after it. In 2019/20, the year before the Covid pandemic it was at 43-a-month.
The Scottish Tenants' Organisation said that Mr McLennan's role should be given Scottish cabinet status to develop an urgently needed national housing action plan to build tens of thousand of new homes to tackle a "housing disaster".
"Tackling the housing and homeless emergency has to become the number one priority of the Scottish Government, " they said. "Unless the above is implemented the Scottish Government will continue from one disaster to the next."
Affordable housing
The Scottish Government has increased funding for affordable housing with a budget of £768 million in 2025/26.
But critics say that this has not made up for past cuts and the ability to keep up with of last year, the Scottish Government's affordable homes budget took a cumulative hit of over £280m over the previous three years without taking inflation into account - based against the 2021/22 allocation of £779.776m - despite a pledge by outgoing First Minister Humza Yousaf of a £80m uplift for affordable housing over the next two years.
Housing campaigners had been staggered by a £196.08m (26%) cut to the budget in the 2024/25 alone, without taking into account inflation, with the spending plans set at £555.862m before an extra £40m was promised by Mr Yousaf.
If the budget had kept up with inflation since 2021/22 in 2024/25, the spending plans would have been at an estimated £985.32m.
When inflation has been taken into account, it was estimated last year that instead of getting £2.631bn over the three years - the affordable homes budget was at £2.058bn - a drop of £573m.
"Mr McLennan said: "Providing everyone in Scotland the right to a warm, safe and affordable home is essential to our key priority of eradicating child poverty.
"We have a strong track record in affordable housing, delivering 136,000 affordable homes including 97,000 for social rent between 2007 and 2024. That's 47% more per head of population than England and 73% more than Wales as of March 2024."
The Scottish Government has fallen way behind in a key target in its 2021 Programme for Government to deliver 110,000 social and affordable homes by 2032 with 70% for social rent.
As of the start of last year there were had been 19,980 affordable homes completed, that received some sort of public money support in the first two years till March 31 - meaning it was at that point already 2,620 short of an 11,300 homes a year target
As of the end of June, with seven-and-a-half years of the target to go 87,527 homes remained to be completed to meet the target, at an average of over 11,670 a year.
Mr McLennan added: "Since we declared a housing emergency last May we have been working at pace a range of stakeholders across the housing system to take urgent action. This has involved working closely with those local authorities who are experiencing the greatest and most sustained homelessness and temporary accommodation pressures. We are also engaging the expertise of the Housing to 2040 Strategic Board and Housing Investment Task Force to support the response.
Paul McLennan (Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire) 'Throughout the development of the Housing (Scotland) Bill we have made sure to strike the appropriate balance between protecting tenants and providing incentives for continued investment in the private rented sector through measures such as rent control areas.'
'Throughout the development of the Housing (Scotland) Bill we have made sure to strike the appropriate balance between protecting tenants and providing incentives for continued investment in the private rented sector through measures such as rent control areas.'
