The decisive general election outcome offers new opportunities and refreshed political choices. 

As such, it has been very encouraging to see the new UK government placing a major emphasis on housing delivery and the planning system within 72 hours of it coming into power, and the subsequent legislation being proposed in the King’s Speech.  But, with these devolved matters north of the border, what, if anything, does this mean for the 693,000 Scottish households that have been identified by independent research as being in some form of housing need?

With the Scottish Government acknowledging a national housing emergency in May, housing starts and completions in ongoing decline and an alarming contraction in SME home builder activity, surely it must be obvious to all that we need to start doing things differently?  At the time of writing, however, there are unfortunately no signs of this.

Underscoring both the importance and urgency of a new approach, recent figures from HFS members show that c5000 new high-quality, energy-efficient homes have been stalled because of cuts to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme.  Builder insights also identify planning and the wider consenting process as having the biggest detrimental impact on their ability to deliver homes..

Will the Scottish Government recalibrate to tackle these challenges that are firmly in its grasp?

Will it bravely acknowledge that the root causes lie in underinvestment of our planning regime and a regulatory environment that fails to recognise the unintended consequences of policies created with poor understanding of the costs and impacts on both consumers and those organisations that build the much-needed homes of all tenures that we require? 

Scotland’s population deserves better than the same old tired responses blaming Brexit, cost price inflation and Westminster.  These are, of course, significant issues but nowhere near as pressing as the risk and uncertainty of trying to navigate a planning system which takes over 62 weeks to process a major housing application or trying to determine long-term investment and construction programming against such a constrained financial backdrop – and these are factors adversely affecting both private for sale and affordable housing given the strong interdependencies across sectors.

With another 18 months before the Scottish 2026 elections, there IS time for impactful change but this requires strong political leadership, direction at pace and a joined-up approach across government at all levels. Last month, we, along with colleagues at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Chartered Institute of Housing, Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Shelter Scotland wrote to the First and Deputy First Ministers calling for an urgent meeting and setting out priorities areas to be addressed in an Action Plan. 

Declaring a housing emergency is meaningless if it only results in more of the same. We know what has to be done and it is frustratingly simple: build more homes and create the policy environment that facilitates it.