Chamber and committees

Starting from Autumn 2023, the Fund will be subject to annual reviews which will consider to what extent the Fund is meeting its aims, in particular, in assisting households who are unable to access self-build finance. The reviews will also consider if adjustments should be made to the Fund to ensure it continues to meet these aims.

There is preliminary work underway to create a feasible Scottish scheme that works for Scottish homeowners and the Scottish tenure system.

We have regular ongoing discussion with the Welsh Government on matters relating to cladding remediation, including the recently launched buy-out scheme.

Recognising that standard bank lending is often not available to support self-build projects, the Scottish Government acts as lender of last resort through the Self Build Loan Fund, supporting successful applicants to build their own home through short-term funding, normally around one year to 18 months. Up to £175,000 is available to eligible borrowers to assist with construction and professional fees costs resulting from their self-build project. The loan is intended to bridge the gap in construction funding and must be repaid in full once building is complete either from mainstream mortgage finance or from equity from the sale of the home.

The Scottish Government has not prepared a comparison between the Self Build Loan Fund and the UK Government’s Help to Build Scheme, which operates on different terms and administrative arrangements and is a matter for the UK Government.

At the end of June 2022, the Self Build Loan Fund administrators, Communities Housing Trust (CHT) had approved 40 loans to successful applicants committing £6.02 million over 13 local authority areas. The average loan offered to borrowers was £150,000.

Of the 40 homes funded through the national Self-Build Loan Fund since 2018, 37 are located in a rural area according to 6-fold urban rural classification. In addition, over one third of all approved loans (14), with committed funding of almost £2.3 million has been made available to people living in the islands. Five of these borrowers have also benefitted from a Croft House Grant.

The number of Self Build Loan Fund loans and value of these loans issued by year of operation is shown in table 1.

Table 1: Number and Value of Self Build Loan Fund loans by year of operation

Officials have engaged in conversations with a number of suppliers to look into the utilisation of digital twin surveys to enable assessment and assurance.

We have logged correspondence from numerous homeowners and factors across Scotland and invite all to follow the progress of the pilot. Additionally we regularly work with local authorities to understand any developer led remediation in their area.

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who will reply in writing within 20 days .

Scotland has led the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK with 111,750 affordable homes now delivered since 2007, over 78,000 of which were for social rent, including 19,339 council homes.

Despite the well documented global issues, not only have we met our previous 50,000 affordable homes target, we have now started to deliver against our commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, 70% of which will be for social rent and 10% in remote, rural and island areas. More than £3.6 billion funding is being made available in this Parliamentary term, continuing to ensure the right homes in the right places.

Many thousands of people across Scotland have already benefitted from safe, warm, accessible homes that meet their needs, in a place where they can be part of a thriving community, and others will continue to benefit well into the future.