Scotland's Housing Crisis: McAllan to deliver emergency plan

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

In an interview with The Herald, Ms McAllan also said she is 'unashamedly' making eradicating child poverty her top priority after taking up the portfolio last month.
Her comments come as, over a year ago, a national housing emergency was declared in the Scottish Parliament.
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There are currently over ten thousand children stuck in temporary accommodation, the highest since records began, and over 250,000 people stuck on social housing waiting lists.
Announcing her intentions to deliver a plan to tackle this, Ms McAllan told The Herald: 'I'm still working with senior officials to get the lay of the land and what now can be stepped up.
'I can't tell you today exactly what my plan is, but I do intend to set out a plan as soon as I can with some enhanced and expedited action which will respond, as I see it, in an emergency fashion."
Asked about when to expect this action, the cabinet secretary said: 'Parliament needs to be back because it will need to be announced in parliament then scrutinised - but that's the timeline I'm working on because we don't have a lot of time.'
The cabinet secretary said the capital position in Scotland is 'very difficult' at the moment, when asked if this plan will include more investment.
Ms McAllan said: 'If there was no shortage of public money, I would want to see it put into housing. There is a shortage of public money so I have to think creatively about that because we still need more.'
A Scottish Government investment taskforce is currently considering how much public money could leverage private money into the housing sector.
The expected post-Scottish Parliamentary recess plan comes as house building numbers in Scotland are plummeting, with nearly 4,000 fewer homes in supply in 2023-24 compared to the year before.
Ms McAlllan said these figures are 'concerning' but insisted they do not present an 'unbridgeable gap'.
The cabinet secretary said: 'The stats that we have had on the all ten year builds, they showed an 11% decrease in starts, and a four per cent decrease in completions and that is of course the wrong direction, particularly when we have such high demands but it is not insurmountable.'
In 2021, the SNP set themselves a task to build 110,000 affordable homes by 2032.
Opposition parties and the outgoing chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Association have said they will fail to meet this target.
The cabinet secretary, however, said she believes they can meet this target and she intends not to rollback on it.
Ms McAllan said: 'These are challenging targets but I think the public expect their governments to challenge themselves. I'm absolutely not intending to roll back on any of that."
Asked if the 2032 target is still credible, she said: 'I think it is. I think that it will require things to step up. It's challenging for a number of reasons, not least costs.'
The cabinet secretary cited inflationary costs that have been 'bearing down' on construction since Covid as well as rising demand for housing.
Housing charity Shelter Scotland recently named John Swinney's legislative agenda a 'Programme for Homelessness' as they argued it failed to provide a significant increase in plans for social home building or extra budgets or investment in housing services.
The Housing Secretary accepted more action is needed but believes "real effort" from the government is currently taking place.
She said: 'I think there is more that we can do but I wouldn't agree with that assessment [from Shelter Scotland] because I see real effort being made on that foundation programme of housing delivering as well as trying to look at all these labours for empty homes.'
Ms McAllan said the 'core' of action to tackle house building would be the Affordable Housing Supply Programme which the government is investing £768 million this year.
The housing secretary said she is told this will translate into 8,000 affordable homes.
However, she admitted this is not enough to solve the crisis situation.
'Houses need to keep on being delivered but that's not enough because that will take 18 months," she said, "So I also need to understand what levers can be pulled to bring empty homes back into use to turn around social voids.
'The challenge is now so stark and there's a number of reasons for that and we just need to demonstrate that we can step up.
'We've got a Scottish election next year. I have come quite late to this brief but if I had to say what's one of things I'm focused on achieving is bringing down the number of children in temporary accommodation. I can't abide the idea that they do not have a permanent home."
Earlier this week, The Herald revealed additional empty homes officers are being recruited to bring more privately owned houses back into use as part of a £2 million fund.
Stalled developments is also an 'untapped area', according to Ms McAllan, and she said the government is 'brokering' those issues with developers to 'unlock tens and thousands of houses'.
An area the cabinet secretary also wants to focus on is supporting people to buy their first home as thousands of people are currently priced out of the market due to bidding wars, rising costs, a lack of government support and demand outstripping supply.
Ms McAllan said she is considering introducing schemes to help first time buyers but could not give details on what this would look like or when this would be introduced.
'I'm looking at all of that." the cabinet secretary said, "It's incredibly difficult and yet it means so much in terms of financial security in somebody's life so I want to help bridge that gap and I want to be fleet of foot on that as well.'
Ms McAllan also said the Lands Building and Transaction Tax, described as a 'highly economically damaging tax' by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, could be an 'important tool' for first time buyers if 'carefully handled'.
Anas Sarwar claimed the planning system is holding back the Scottish economy. (Image: PA) The housing secretary also said she is looking into the practice of 'flipping' - taking accommodation labelled as temporary and making it permanent.
'It's worth saying that a lot of the families in temporary accommodation just now, it's not necessarily unsuitable," she said, "A lot of it will be council or social housing but by the very nature of being temporary, it's not acceptable so that will be something that I'm really focused on.
'We've also got the Housing Bill going through just now so I'm challenging my team to say we've got the opportunity of primary legislation here.
'I don't want to get to the other side of this bill and be told we needed primary legislative power for other measures we wanted to put in place.'
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar recently claimed the planning system is holding back the Scottish economy as he pointed to development applications taking 58 weeks on average to be processed in Glasgow but only 18 weeks in Manchester.
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Responding to his comments, Ms McAllan said she understands how planning can be both an 'enabler and inhibitor of action'.
'I want it to be an enabler and my colleagues and I are doing a lot of work on planning reform and looking at support needed for local authorities to clear backlogs', Ms McAllan said, adding that she does not think it is appropriate for the Scottish Government to 'go over the head of local authorities' when it comes to planning application decisions.
Working alongside her colleague and public finance minister Ivan McKee, the cabinet secretary said they are developing a plan to provide more support to local authorities to help them move through planning applications more quickly.
The Scottish Government has invested £40 million this year into supporting councils to acquire homes in order to get people out of temporary accommodation.
The cabinet secretary hopes this will free up 1,000 homes in Scotland this year alone.
Ms McAllan said she is 'proud' of the government's record on housing.
She said: 'We have consistently invested highly in affordable homes in Scotland to the point now where proportionately the availability of social homes in Scotland is 47% higher in England and 73% higher in Wales.
'But the situation that we are in just now is extremely strained."