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Scottish housing secretary confirms 70% of 2030 delivery target will be for social rent
The Scottish government is targeting 25,000 new social rent homes by 2030 under its housing emergency action plan.
Scottish housing secretary confirms 70% of 2030 delivery target will be for social rent #ukhousingSpeaking exclusively to Inside Housing, Màiri McAllan MSP confirmed that her administration is aiming for 70% of the total planned 36,000 affordable homes to be social housing.
The homes will be built using an investment of up to £4.9bn committed by the government in its recently announced plan to tackle the country’s housing crisis.
At the time, the minister said the homes will be provided through a mixture of public and privately leveraged investment.
Asked to clarify the £4.9bn investment plan, she said it does include an “uplift” in public money but remained tight-lipped on further details. Additional information will be revealed during the upcoming Spending Review.
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Ms McAllan said: “It will be an uplift in public money. But given the strained situation we’re in with public finances… it’s incumbent on me to try and create the conditions to leverage in private funding as well.”
Around 10% of the 36,000 planned homes are set to go in rural and island communities, in line with aims set out in 2021.
Ms McAllan reiterated the SNP’s commitment to the target it set four years ago of delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, including 70% at social rent, though she admitted that the goal is “very stretching”.
That target would mean more than 70,000 homes would have to be delivered in just two years. The government’s latest data found social housebuilding in Scotland has hit its lowest level in a decade.
Ms McAllan said: “I suppose a lot of what I’m trying to do now is early doors, [setting] the groundwork for us having the capacity to build [towards] being able to deliver that many homes per year in order to meet that target.”
It comes as research commissioned by Scotland housing groups shows that the country needs to be building 15,000 affordable homes per year over the next five years to meet its housing need. This target would require £8.2bn of investment over the next parliament.
But Ms McAllan said it is unrealistic to expect that such a number of homes could be built annually at the moment, and that the level of spending it would require is “not a realistic proposition”.
She explained: “Public funding is really, really tight just now, everybody knows that, and despite that, this government has decided we’re going to uplift affordable homes.
“The level of spending that would be required to meet the delivery that the charities were talking about is not a realistic proposition just now, unfortunately.”
She stressed the need to build the “confidence and the capacity and the skills and the supply chain” to make sure the target of 15,000 affordable homes can be reached in a few years’ time.
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