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Scottish minister reveals affordable homes target includes buy-backs
The Scottish housing minister has come under fire after saying that a target to deliver 50,000 new affordable homes will not be exclusively new build, but will include councils buying back existing stock.
Speaking at Holyrood last week, Kevin Stewart said he would allow “some flexibility” from councils if they wanted to bring stock back into the social housing sector.
“It is very important that that flexibility is there,” he said.
The Scottish Government recently announced how it would allocate £1.75bn to councils in order to hit a target of 50,000 affordable homes by 2021 – 35,000 of which are to be for social rent.
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But the term “new” homes has been dropped from the original commitment outlined in the Scottish National Party manifesto, leading to criticisms from opposition MSPs and housing campaigners.
Adam Lang, head of communications and policy at Shelter Scotland, said the pledge to deliver 35,000 more homes for social rent would make the “biggest difference” to those in need.
He added: “Against this overall target, bringing ex-local authority stock back into council control may be helpful in some limited cases – for example in rural communities where the cost of building is higher – but it is unlikely that this would be on any significant scale.
“The only way to start to meaningfully tackle our housing crisis is to meet the commitment on 35,000 new homes for social rent and to then ensure that future affordable housing targets remain consistently high in Scotland and we never again slip back into not building the homes we need, year on year.”
