Chamber and committees

That is perhaps not the easiest question for me to reflect on, simply because of when I came into post. When I took up my role in June, I immediately wanted to spend the summer speaking to as many stakeholders as I could, to members, and to representatives of the housing and charity sectors. There was a question that I often posed to them, noting that we have some of the most protective anti-homelessness laws of any country and that, in difficult times, we have consistently invested in the delivery of affordable homes—with 140,000 now having been built.

For a long time, it felt like the system was in a state of equilibrium. I was seeking views on what had changed to lead us to a situation where there is considerable strain and demand is outstripping supply. My objective was to turn that into a plan that could respond now, with actions in the immediate term to help release the pressure that exists in temporary accommodation—which was never intended to operate to its current scale—while setting the groundwork for change over the long term.

My plan sought to do that, first, by ending the situation of children living in temporary accommodation and, secondly, by supporting the present housing needs of vulnerable communities, with a longer-term piece of work to create the conditions for investment and growth, which is how we will ultimately reset the housing system in Scotland to function as it was intended and as it ought to. That is what my plan is trying to do. I am very confident that it will make a difference. I would not say this if it was not true, but it has been roundly welcomed by charity and the housing sector, although it is not the last word by any means, and it will continue to be a live document and a live approach to managing what is a complex task.

That is right. Doing so sensitively, I already monitor the number of people in temporary accommodation, the number of children in temporary accommodation, the number of breaches of statutory obligations at local authority level and the number of people indicating that they have slept rough in the months prior to presenting as homeless. I already monitor all those things and have management information in respect of them. The task now is to pull all that together into reasonable ways of deciphering whether things are getting better or worse, or when we might say that we are through it. However, that will be different in different areas.

We are all turning our minds to that. My goal is to change the direction of the homelessness stats and the house building stats, or at least to set the groundwork to enable those things to happen.

I mentioned to the convener that the third part of the housing emergency action plan is about creating the optimum conditions for investment in our housing sector. One aspect of that is to do with confidence. Over the summer, it was put to me that it would be very helpful if we had multi-annual certainty on funding, so we have delivered that—at least, I have committed to it and Shona Robison will set that out in the spending review. More money always helps, and the commitment to multi-annual funding is accompanied with an uptick in funding for the affordable housing supply programme, with about £808 million this year and up to £4.9 billion over the coming four years. We have also set a target to increase delivery across all tenures by 10 per cent each year over the next three years. That is in response to another call from the sector for leadership from the Government to say, “We want you to go ahead and build.”

There are other facilitators, such as planning. Ivan McKee has been doing a huge amount of work with the planning team to ensure that it is an enabler of development rather than an inhibitor of it.

I pulled out information on planning to highlight to the committee. We have created a national planning hub, which has the capacity to offer surge capacity to local authorities that are under pressure. We have recruited 17 future planners to work part time with the Scottish Government while they study. We have trebled the number of bursaries for student planners.

A big piece of work is also on-going on stalled sites. I do not have the figure for how many stalled sites we have, but I will make sure that it is sent to the committee. Those are areas for which planning permission has been given, but the build has not taken place. We are brokering agreements to address what is holding things up and how we move forward to delivery. We added to that in the plan, with a new notification direction to local authorities. Essentially, we will oversee how national planning framework 4 is being applied across local authorities. We have added other bits and pieces, including asking for proportionality when dealing with SMEs.

The package as a whole is about trying to create optimum conditions for investment and delivery. The exemption from rent control for mid-market rent and build-to-rent properties is another means by which we are trying to make progress, because we need to build capacity quite rapidly.

Is that the report that was funded by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Shelter Scotland and—

My key takeaway from the report was the number of homes that those organisations suggested need to be built. I am very mindful of all that. We will respond to the report in full. I welcome the report and all the other work that Shelter, the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and the SFHA have done with us.

My impression, having been in the portfolio for a few months, is that the team that operates the affordable home supply programme in Government is extremely nimble. You might be thinking back to your experience on the other side, in the housing sector, but what I see is a programme that is well funded and embedded in its areas. We have area-based teams that know their part of Scotland extremely well and work closely with the RSLs and councils in the area, and they are flexible. If a development looks as though it is nearing completion, we will back it and back it. If a step back has to be taken with development for whatever reason—you will know that there are a plethora of reasons why that could happen—we will be able to put the resource elsewhere and be flexible to ensure that homes are being delivered.

Matt Elsby might want to say more about the east or how the programme can flex.

I completely understand the desire to have that detail, but I cannot pre-empt the spending review or the budget that Shona Robison is working on, which will set out all the detail. However, I can say that it will be a combination of public investment and leveraged private investment. It is absolutely incumbent on me to work to deliver that, because of the chronic shortage of public funding that we are experiencing across the UK just now.

Up to £4.9 billion will be spent. It will be a combination of public and leveraged private investment. The other detail that I will confirm is that it will retain the 70 per cent social target and the 10 per cent rural and islands target.

That is paused just now. For parity across the sector, I want to ensure that we move these products forward at the same time. I appreciate that that is not very helpful, but, basically, we are doing the work. Does Jess Niven have anything to add?

I am very sorry, convener—I caught only the last bit of your question. Was it about how the warm homes plan would affect the climate change plan?

Yes. In principle, I am absolutely in favour of that. I represent a part of Lanarkshire that has many a former coal mining town, and I have seen at first hand the economic dislocation that came from mine closures. Transferring that capacity into renewable energy means that money can flow into communities, which is transformational—even more so when there is an ownership stake. I am absolutely in favour of that, and I want it to be considered in relation to heat networks, as it is with onshore wind and other types of renewable energy development.

The conversations that I have been having have been more in the space of trying to get more houses rather than the question of legacy. However, it is an excellent point, and we would want to manage it so that they could be used in that way once the need for energy workers to be there has passed—if, indeed, it passes.

I am more at the front end of that work, where it is about asking how we make sure that the homes get built to facilitate the economic opportunity. I was keen that there was a specific rural aspect to the housing emergency action plan, because not only is there a shortage, but there are also enormous economic opportunities, not least in relation to the energy revolution. I want to make sure that we have the houses to facilitate that.

The committee might also be interested in the commitment to work with the Scottish National Investment Bank and public bodies to understand public land across the board and the extent to which that could better serve housing need. I met the Scottish Land Commission on that question, which flows from research that it did with the University of Glasgow. Mairi Gougeon and I are, in essence, trying to take that forward.