Official Report 959KB pdf
The next item of business is a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Màiri McAllan, on tackling the housing emergency. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
14:35
On 11 June, I was appointed as Scotland’s first Cabinet Secretary for Housing, with the First Minister placing homes at the heart of his Government. A safe, warm, secure and affordable place to call home is fundamental to a life of dignity and opportunity. We have long believed that and, since coming into government, we have invested considerably in it. Since 2007, we have helped to deliver more than 139,000 affordable homes, with 99,000 of those available for social rent. That has resulted in Scotland having a delivery rate for affordable homes per head of population of 47 per cent more than in England and 73 per cent more than in Wales.
We have also legislated for some of the most protective anti-homelessness laws of any country and have fully mitigated the effect of the United Kingdom Government’s bedroom tax, so that no one in Scotland pays it. Despite that, there is unprecedented strain in demand for, and supply of, housing, after years of financial strain from UK austerity and Brexit, the pandemic and other inflationary pressures.
Since we declared a housing emergency, significant progress has been made. In May, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice updated Parliament on our targeted work to date. That has included helping some 2,700 households with children into affordable homes in the year to December 2024, and bringing almost 1,000 homes back into use in 2024-25 through our targeted £40 million of investment. We also increased our affordable homes supply programme budget to £768 million this year, so that we are able to deliver a further 8,000 affordable homes.
In addition, the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership reported earlier today that 2,066 privately owned long-term empty homes were returned to use in 2024-25. That is the highest annual amount in 15 years, and it brings the total number of homes returned to nearly 13,000.
However, there is still much to do and we must go further, and the action plan that I am setting out today does that. Over the summer, I have worked extensively with partners across the housing sector. It was very important to me to understand their challenges and hear their proposed solutions.
My resultant plan is centred on three core missions: first, ending the situation of children living in unsuitable accommodation, as part of the Government’s work to eradicate child poverty; secondly, supporting the housing needs of vulnerable communities; and lastly, building our future by maximising growth and investment in Scotland’s housing sector.
Children should not live in accommodation that is unsuited to their needs. While temporary accommodation is a vital safety net for families, it must be just that—temporary. John Swinney’s Government is working to eradicate child poverty and we will, through this plan, double our acquisition fund from £40 million to £80 million this year, which will bring our total additional targeted investment to £120 million since the emergency was declared. That will support the acquisition of at least 1,200 homes over the 18 months of the fund, helping between 600 and 800 children to quickly move out of temporary accommodation and into permanent tenancies.
I will work with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and with local authorities to make clear our expectation that that funding should be concentrated on family-sized homes where they are required. Following the guidance that the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers has produced on flipping temporary accommodation to a settled residence, we will ask councils to now contact every household with children in good-quality temporary accommodation to examine flipping opportunities, with the funding helping to replenish temporary stock.
We will invest £2 million in discretionary housing payments to support households currently in temporary housing to find settled homes in the private rented sector; we will fund pilots, such as private sector leasing schemes, to tackle the use of unsuitable bed and breakfasts and hotels; and, subject to parliamentary approval of the Housing (Scotland) Bill, we will introduce a long-term system of rent controls to ensure affordability.
As well as the availability of homes, I am focusing on the quality. No one in Scotland—and especially no child—should live with damp or mould. I confirm that, should Parliament agree, we will raise the standard and quality of all rented accommodation in Scotland by bringing Awaab’s law into force in the social and private rented sectors from March 2026.
I turn to the second pillar of my plan—supporting the housing needs of vulnerable communities. Following the Cabinet meeting this morning, I visited the exceptional Scottish Women’s Aid team in Edinburgh. I heard from staff who have worked with survivors—and their children—when they are trying to leave an abusive partner.
Domestic abuse is the leading cause of homelessness among women, and I know how financial support can help women with children to be free of abusive men. No woman should flee violence only to face homelessness. That is why my plan will establish a national fund to leave, which will be backed this year by £1 million, to help up to 1,200 women and their children leave an abusive relationship.
Another vulnerable group is people with multiple and complex needs, who are at risk of cyclical homelessness and rough sleeping. Over the summer, I met those who benefit from and help to facilitate the housing first programme. The stories of resilience, hope and recovery will stay with me always. To support those people, we will invest an additional £4 million this year to expand the delivery of housing first tenancies.
In response to strong calls from the sector, we will extend rapid rehousing transition plan funding to 2026-27 and invest £500,000 in winter preparedness measures to ensure that, in the cold winter months, people get a suitable bed for the night.
Looking forward, I am focusing on building our future by maximising growth and investment in Scotland’s housing sector. That means continuing to invest extensively in affordable homes and, at the same time, working to create the optimum conditions to foster confidence and investment.
I referred earlier to the valuable engagement with partners this summer. There was a consistent call for the certainty that multiyear funding trajectories can provide. Today, the Scottish Government is positively answering that call, and I confirm that we will provide that multiyear funding forward look.
We will complement that with a new delivery ambition to increase delivery across all tenures by at least 10 per cent each year over the first three years of the next parliamentary session. In support of that ambition, and knowing how vital continued development is to the availability and affordability of homes, I take this opportunity to confirm my intention, in principle, to exempt mid-market rent and build-to-rent properties, where appropriate, from the rent controls that are being introduced under the Housing (Scotland) Bill. Such exemptions would be designed to protect and promote investment in those sectors and were clearly called for by our housing investment task force.
We will work with East Lothian Council and private sector partners to unlock investment in the new town Blindwells, which has the potential to deliver 10,000 homes. I will support first-time buyers who are on low or medium incomes by reopening the open market shared equity scheme to them.
As a rural MSP, I know well how housing challenges differ between Scotland’s diverse places. As well as continuing to support the rural and islands housing fund, we will expand our work by engaging public bodies, landowners and the Scottish National Investment Bank to unlock land for housing in rural Scotland.
Key to all of that is our planning system. The “Planning and the Housing Emergency—Delivery Plan”, which was published in November last year, set out 23 actions, and we have made good progress against them.
My action plan takes our planning commitments further. I confirm today that we will issue a new notification direction to planning authorities, through which ministers will closely monitor the application of planning policy and intervene when needed.
The Minister for Public Finance, the chief planner and I will also write to planning authorities to set out our expectations of customer service and proportionality when dealing with small and medium-sized enterprise house builders and, separately, to all planning stakeholders on our expectation of an emergency-led approach across development plan preparation and the determination of planning applications.
I referred earlier to our commitment to offer multiyear funding certainty. Having confirmed that, I am pleased to go further today by accompanying this forward look with a significant step up in funding. I confirm that we will invest up to £4.9 billion over the coming four years to support the delivery of about 36,000 affordable homes, which will provide up to 24,000 children with a warm, safe home. Although further details will be outlined in the forthcoming spending review, the delivery will be through a mixture of public and privately leveraged investment.
I present today a rounded and ambitious package, and I trust that members will find much in it to welcome. What they will not find is a single word dedicated to spreading fear and division in our communities. They will not find a single word scapegoating those who are seeking refuge in Scotland. I call on the UK Home Office to properly fund and organise its asylum processes, and I recommit Scotland to being a welcoming and inclusive nation.
I call on all partners to join us in delivering the bold actions that have been set out in my plan—not least members of the housing to 2040 strategic board, whose support and enthusiasm I so value. Let us now work together to turn commitment into action and to turn action into early, positive and lasting change.
The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, after which we will move on to the next item of business.
I thank the cabinet secretary for providing advance sight of her statement. I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government is discussing an issue that is devolved to this Parliament, in a week in which we will spend three hours of valuable parliamentary time discussing foreign affairs.
It has been more than a year since the Parliament declared a housing emergency. At the time, many of us hoped that that would create an imperative on the Scottish Government to build more homes more quickly. Instead, just 7,444 affordable homes were completed in 2024-25, which was a decrease of 22 per cent on the previous year. That is around half the 15,000 affordable homes that housing charities say that we need to meet current demand.
Rather than increasing the affordable housing supply, the Scottish National Party has pressed ahead with a housing bill that will not build a single home. It has imposed disastrous rent controls on the sector, and nearly 5,000 landlords have exited the market in the past year. That figure is likely to rise unless the SNP makes housing a more attractive area for investment.
If the cabinet secretary is serious about tackling the housing emergency, will she commit to going further than she has today in attracting and utilising private finance to achieve the target of providing 15,000 affordable homes per year?
Meghan Gallacher does herself absolutely no credit with her comments about international affairs. The issues for discussion are very important to the people of Scotland and they should be heard in this Parliament.
With regard to housing, I urge a bit of humility and perhaps self-reflection on the part of Meghan Gallacher and her colleagues. If it were not for the Conservatives, with their relentless austerity agenda, their complete mismanagement of the United Kingdom’s economy and their pursuit of the hardest of hard Brexits, the prevailing economic conditions in this country would not have been so unfavourable in recent years and households would not have been pushed to the brink in the way that they have been, which has increased homelessness across this country. I encourage Meghan Gallacher to have another look at my statement and see how it speaks to creating favourable conditions for investment, and to come back to me if she wants to have a sensible conversation.
Two years ago, housing emergencies were declared across Scotland. A year and a half ago, the Government acknowledged the crisis. Today, ALACHO reports that councils remain just as overwhelmed as they were three years ago, and the Government’s response does not match the scale of that challenge.
The promise to move 600 to 800 children out of temporary accommodation is good news for those children, but, with more than 10,000 kids living in unacceptable conditions, when will the Government end the use of unsuitable temporary accommodation for children?
The statement makes passing mention of planning, but, without meaningful planning reform, we will not build the homes that we need. Will the cabinet secretary say whether the Government will restore its policy in favour of sustainable development in order to kick-start the house building that we need?
We welcome the increase in funding and stability after years of SNP cuts, but a 10 per cent rise in stats over three years falls far short of the 15,000 affordable homes that Shelter Scotland and the Chartered Institute of Housing say are essential. When does the cabinet secretary believe that the housing and homelessness emergency will end?
The housing emergency, and the homelessness part of that, is a very complex picture. It is multifaceted, and I do not believe that we should be trying to tie it down to key performance indicators and figures to be measured.
In general, the housing emergency will be over when people can fully utilise the protective anti-homelessness legislation that we are very proud to have in this country, and when supply and demand and availability of social housing are met.
I hope that, if the member looks at the broad commitment that the Government has made in the plan, he will see a series of actions that will bring that together. Immediate action includes investing in the acquisition of homes to take children out of temporary and unsuitable accommodation right now. It also includes directions and advice to local authorities to contact every home with children who are in a temporary but suitable home to consider flipping that to a permanent residency—that can make a difference now. Overwhelmingly, what will make a difference is our commitment to multi-annual funding certainty and a significant increase in the funding of affordable homes in Scotland.
Everybody who is working on the issue understands that the provision of affordable homes is the way to tackle it, and the member will see our commitment to that in the statement.
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s return to Parliament and wish her well in her new role.
It is clear from the recent evidence on domestic abuse that the Social Justice and Social Security Committee took that women’s experience of homelessness is very different from that of men. Therefore, the response to their housing needs should be very different. Will the cabinet secretary say more about how the Scottish Government is working to support women who are fleeing domestic abuse as a key part of addressing homelessness pressures?
As I said in my statement, domestic abuse is the leading cause of homelessness for women in Scotland. That is unacceptable to this Government.
There are many barriers that can prevent someone who is experiencing domestic abuse from deciding and being able to leave that relationship. It can be a very dangerous and difficult time for them. Therefore, I am pleased that we have been able to commit to rolling out the fund to leave on a national basis. We know from our piloting of the fund that it has a positive impact. Women who are experiencing domestic abuse will be able to apply for a grant to pay for the essentials that they need when leaving a relationship with an abusive partner. We believe that the £1 million investment in our new national fund could help 1,200 women and their children to do just that.
Scotland has a record high number of children who are growing up in temporary accommodation—there are more than 10,000 of them—which has a huge knock-on effect on their mental health, their education and their life prospects. The statement refers to the provision of an additional £40 million for the acquisitions fund, which brings the total to £120 million so far, but that has not done nearly enough or brought the number below the 10,000 record figure. Therefore, how can the cabinet secretary possibly assure the Parliament that those targeted investments are anywhere close to the radical action that is needed? How will any more investment actively change the lives of Scotland’s children?
I will respond to that by highlighting the fact that the 2,700 households with children who have been assisted into affordable housing in the year to December 2024 through this Government’s work will not recognise the characterisation that has been put to me, nor will the people who are now living in the 2,066 formerly long-term empty properties that this Government’s investment in the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership has helped to turn into settled homes. I ask the member to reflect on those figures.
How will the Scottish Government prioritise the delivery of multiyear funding for the affordable housing supply programme? What positive impact is that programme expected to have in East Ayrshire and across Scotland?
The Government’s core priorities will sit at the heart of the spending review process, and they will guide where and to what extent funding is allocated. We have recognised today that affordable housing is central to delivering against our priorities as a Government, in particular the leading priority of eradicating child poverty, as well as growing our economy and tackling net zero.
We have responded to the asks of the housing sector for multiyear funding, which I hope will give the certainty and confidence that are required for investment. That will, of course, apply across East Ayrshire, which is currently benefiting from almost £13 million of investment that is being made available this year, with further details to follow.
I welcome the cabinet secretary to her new role. As she observed, Glasgow has a long and proud history of welcoming those in need, including thousands of people who have sought asylum through the Home Office’s dispersal programme since it started in 1999. However, in 2022, the Government removed the local connection rule for homelessness applications, including those that are made by refugees. That measure was taken in good faith to allow homeless people greater autonomy to control their lives, but, however well intentioned, it has inadvertently increased pressure on Glasgow’s homelessness services.
Last year, more than one in 10 homelessness applications came from asylum seekers who had been granted refugee status outside Scotland and who then moved to Glasgow, as a local connection is not required. Glasgow City Council estimates that, this year, almost half of all homelessness cases in the city will involve people who have been granted asylum in other dispersal cities, such as London, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, which will create an overspend of £66 million by next year.
Will the cabinet secretary review the suspension of local connection rules, while retaining exemptions for particularly vulnerable groups such as domestic abuse survivors, given the immediate and urgent housing pressure in Glasgow?
I thank Paul Sweeney for that question. We keep all the means by which we respond to homelessness under review, but I confirm today that we have no intention of rolling back the changes that this Government put in place in respect of local connection.
The significant levels of asylum decision making by the UK Home Office are putting significant pressure on Scottish local authorities, not least Glasgow City Council. The challenges that arise are not the fault of refugees, who continue to be valuable members of our communities and who will be treated respectfully. The issue lies at the door of the UK Home Office, and I ask Paul Sweeney to support me and Susan Aitken, the leader of Glasgow City Council, as we call on his colleagues in the UK Home Office to manage their asylum processes more reasonably and to back them with more money. That is required to make sure that the system works well for those who are seeking asylum and for others on housing waiting lists.
There is much interest in this statement. I would be grateful for concise questions and responses.
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s focus today on significant investment and her focus on the whole of the housing system. We need a focused, holistic emergency response to deliver for our communities.
Shelter Scotland’s commissioned report “Affordable Housing Need in Scotland Post-2026”, which was published today, highlights the sharp rise in temporary accommodation usage since 2020 and the urgent need for increased investment.
Bringing empty homes back into use is key to addressing the situation. Can the cabinet secretary outline how the Scottish Government is working with local authorities to ensure that that is done urgently and that blockages in the system are removed? What impact will that investment have on ensuring that more children have access to safe and secure homes, with temporary stays being as brief as possible and being avoided altogether in cases of domestic abuse?
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests as a member of Shelter Scotland’s committee.
I agree with the principle of Elena Whitham’s question, which is that we must pull every lever to respond to homelessness and the housing emergency. That means delivering more homes, but it also means using existing homes to better effect and bringing private, long-term empty homes back into use. I mentioned in my statement how our investment in the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership is doing just that and how figures released this morning set out that, last year, a record number of empty homes—2,066—were brought back into use by that means. I stress that we are continuing our investment in that fund.
In addition, I direct Elena Whitham to speak to my colleague Ivan McKee, who I have been working with on planning, about how that can facilitate all that we wish to achieve in housing.
Renters across Scotland have been hit by outrageous rent demands. Earlier this year, the Scottish Government ended temporary rent controls that were meant to protect tenants from large hikes until permanent rent controls came into force. Living Rent reports that, since the end of those controls in April, there have been 175 cases in which landlords have requested a 20 per cent increase on average. Forty-one landlords proposed rent increases above 30 per cent, and some went as high as 88 per cent.
The cabinet secretary has clearly been listening to the landlord lobby, given some of the rent controls exemptions that she has announced today. Given the massive hikes that renters are facing, will she acknowledge the plight of tenants and support the Green amendment to reinstate temporary controls until the Housing (Scotland) Bill comes into effect?
Affordability of rents is one of the key points that require attention as we respond to the housing emergency. I made clear my commitment to that when I met Living Rent over the summer. The Housing (Scotland) Bill, which is currently going through Parliament and which is approaching stage 3, contains a system of long-term, national and evidence-based rent control provisions, which I will be glad to see on the statute book, subject to Parliament’s approval, so that we can support tenants with affordability across Scotland.
I think that the cabinet secretary knows that the most significant changes in the Scottish Government’s housing policy have been to dispense with some of the more damaging proposals in the Housing (Scotland) Bill and the reversal of the cuts to the affordable housing budget. However, we are still in a housing emergency and the scale of the plan that is set out today does not meet the scale of the problem that we face.
My question is about investment, particularly in relation to the exemptions from rent controls. The cabinet secretary talked about mid-market rent and build to rent. Will the provisions cover the private sector as well as housing associations?
The regulations through which the exemptions will be set out—or, at least, through which it is my intention that they should be set out, because they are subject to the process in Parliament—will consider all the detail that Willie Rennie is asking me about today. For absolute clarity and for accuracy, I will await that process being undertaken before we confirm that. I will be glad to discuss all of that with Willie Rennie and with partners from across the chamber.
The housing emergency has been decades in the making, since Thatcherism, and it is the biggest issue for millennials and those younger than that. Therefore, I warmly welcome the significant investment that the Scottish Government has announced today. Does the cabinet secretary agree that both private and public spending on house building is an investment in our national infrastructure, and that we need to approach it with that mindset and focus on quality of build so that we create new buildings that last for many decades? Will the investment that has been announced be targeted in areas with the most pressure on the housing system, such as here in the capital city?
A number of the pots of additional funding that the Government has released in response to the emergency have been directed to the local authorities that have the most sustained temporary accommodation and homelessness pressures. It is my intention that a number of the pots that have been announced today will continue to do that, and I will work with COSLA and local authorities on that.
On the general point, the Scottish Government agreed with the recommendation of the housing investment task force, which published its report in June, that housing should be recognised as critical infrastructure. I hope that Ben Macpherson, in reviewing what is contained in the statement today, will see that I have brought that to bear in the commitments made.
The affordable housing supply programme budget has increased by only £12 million since 2018-19, which is against the financial backdrop. How does the Scottish Government expect that affordable housing demand will be met when a report from Shelter Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations found that £900 million a year is needed to meet the affordable housing demand?
That is a reasonable question. There are two points to flag.
First, let us not forget the economic circumstances that we have come through in recent years and the impact that those will have had on value for money and on the affordable home supply programme’s ability to go further in delivering housing. Let us remember that construction inflation reached 24 per cent in summer 2022. All the while, we are dealing with the expectation that Scotland’s capital block grant will be reduced by 1.1 per cent in the period up to 2029-30.
Mr Stewart was absolutely right to recognise the difficulties that the Government is wrestling with, many of which are outwith its control, but he will have seen in my statement and from the Scottish Government a determination to overcome them and to ensure that there is sufficient affordable housing for the population of Scotland.
Can the cabinet secretary advise how tackling the housing emergency by ensuring that families have access to a home will work towards the Scottish Government’s core mission of eradicating child poverty?
I can point to a number of statistics and research methodologies, which will be available in time. In general, we all know that having a safe, warm and secure place to call home is absolutely fundamental to a life of dignity and opportunity and to the eradication of child poverty in Scotland. I hope that Rona Mackay will find that that commitment is clear throughout my statement.
I welcome the cabinet secretary to her position. A recent report from Shelter Scotland stated that, shockingly, there are more children in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh than there are in temporary accommodation in the whole of Wales. How can our capital city still be in such a crisis a year after we declared a housing emergency, and what will the cabinet secretary do practically to help the City of Edinburgh Council to move on from that situation?
On the question of practical matters, I refer the member to the statement. It takes members through some immediate actions that we are taking, such as investing £40 million of additional funding for acquisitions, investing £2 million in discretionary housing payments in order to support households to move to the private rented sector and, fundamentally, providing a significant uplift in funding for affordable homes, which is coupled with multi-annual certainty on the funding trajectory.
Together, coupled with the other provisions in the plan, those steps are exactly how we will combat the unacceptable situation in Edinburgh, which the member was right to highlight, and in other local authority areas throughout Scotland.
We all recognise the scale of the housing emergency and the need to get homes built quickly, but what action is the cabinet secretary taking to unblock housing developments that already have funding and approvals in place but are being held up by Government processes?
I refer Sharon Dowey to our “Planning and the Housing Emergency—Delivery Plan”, which was published last November and against which action continues to be taken, not least our action to remove barriers on stalled housing sites, the placing of our national planning hub, the recruitment of 17 future planners to work with the Scottish Government while they study their master’s degrees in planning and the trebling of the number of bursaries for student planners for this year. Those were our commitments from November, and Sharon Dowey will find a boosting of them in my statement today—not least my intention to create a new notification direction for ministers to observe and oversee how national housing policy is applied.
I welcome the cabinet secretary to her position. We have had a couple of very useful discussions over the summer, and I am pleased that she agrees with me on rent controls exemptions.
The cabinet secretary also agrees with me on the need to bring into force Awaab’s law to deal with damp and mould in all rented homes. Will she work with me on a possible amendment to the Housing (Scotland) Bill on that issue at stage 3, and will she tell us what enforcement mechanisms she foresees being introduced to ensure that landlords comply?
Over the summer, I have engaged with Graham Simpson on the Housing (Scotland) Bill’s detail. In advance of stage 3, I intend to continue that engagement with him and with other interested parties across the Parliament.
That concludes the ministerial statement. I will allow a moment or two for front-bench members to organise for the next item of business.
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