The Scottish media latched on to another “bad news” story this week when they discovered that there were over a quarter million people on housing waiting lists, with barely a tenth of them being allocated affordable houses each year. Though much is made of homelessness in Scotland, this is a different type of homelessness. 

Almost all these people have jobs and are not sleeping rough. But they are making do with unsuitable, sub-standard or temporary accommodation as they try to hold down jobs and build a life. They include many families and over 8,000 children, whose education and future are both being compromised. As outlined in a blog from this April The House that Jock Built, once, over 54% of Scots lived in social housing.

“I am very pleased that despite that we have reached our 50,000 target and that since 2007 we have delivered 111,750 affordable homes, with over 78,000 of these for social rent.”

—Shona Robison, Deputy First Minister

She claims 9,757 affordable homes were delivered in 2021-22, but this is not borne out by statistics.Impressive as such claims are, the 7,450 average over those 15 years means that things have seriously tailed off. This is exacerbated by the more elastic interpretation put on what constitutes “affordable”.  

Renting from councils is generally the cheapest, but housing associations are charging ever-higher rents, with Glasgow Housing Association coming in for particularly heavy criticism as landlords.

According to Scottish Housing News, a “worrying” drop in the number of new homes of all types being started in Scotland as the accumulated shortfall of homes of all tenures built since 2007 has grown to over 110,000. In fact, the number of new starts of all types dropped by 13% over the last year from 21,825 to 19,060. Given that council starts dropped by the same percent, the social housing situation seems less rosy than the Deputy First Minister would have us believe.

The basis for her assertions may be that, in the previous year, social sector new housebuilding show an increase of 17% to 6,704 completions, with local authorities’ up by 40% to 2,792 and housing associations’ up by 5% to 3,912. Unfortunately, social sector starts for this year fell by 16% to 4,161, with housing association approvals dropping a whopping 26% to 2,251.

“Given we have a critical shortage of homes, the 1,806 increase in the number completed in the year end to June 2022 is welcome. Disappointingly, however, this is more than offset by the 2,765 drop in the number of new homes started and will further add to the shortfall of more than 110,000 that has accumulated since 2007.”

—Jane Wood, Chief Executive, Homes for Scotland

The fact that there has never been a dedicated Housing Minister until now in the 16 years of the present SNP Government calls into question the priority they set on this key matter. For the first nine years, there were four ministers with portfolios that included housing. But for the last seven years, it disappeared into the portfolios of the growing number of Cabinet Secretaries and junior Ministers.

While this Government has been fond of creating “Councils” of worthies to target specific issues on which it is keen to focus, there has yet to be any unifying focus on housing in general, let alone affordable housing. There is some question whether the current developer free-for-all is producing sustainable communities, as the trend is to plonk a hundred commuter homes in an available field and let social integration take care of itself. But the fragmented nature whereby social housing is being provided does not seem to be addressing the issue. Low-cost-for-sale and rent-to-buy schemes are included as affordable” and councils seem reluctant to rebuild their own depleted stocks, even with right-to-buy considerably weakened.

The closest to a viable scheme appears to come from England, where Places for People have been making a business out of affordable housing for decades. It is a sign of drift in Scotland that the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLLACE) have given up in this area, and placed their faith elsewhere, as indicated by the article in their newsletter How Partnering with Local Authorities Can Help Beat the Housing Crisis , from Places for People. This article underscores exasperation at SOLACE from years of this government’s mishandling of its local government partners.

That a London-based company should be the one showing initiative in the historically Scottish issue of social housing should cause deep embarrassment to this government who are so keen to show what “independence” might achieve. The deeper question is why it is taking them so long to show the leadership needed to do something about it.

“The key to boosting housing supply is diversification, which will enable a range of large and small housing companies and local authorities to bring their capacity and expertise to boost housing production. Local authorities often face severe revenue constraints, so innovative new partnerships have a critical role to play in achieving the key aims of getting new developments underway and generating new income streams.”

—David Cowans, Chief Executive at Places for People

* “A Lack of Shelter” (Scots)

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