Scottish Government announces £75m funding to boost housebuilding

The Scottish Government has announced measures to speed up housebuilding via two new funds totalling £75 million.

A new £50m infrastructure fund, unveiled earlier this week, aims to speed up the construction of thousands of new affordable and private homes. The flexible grant and loan fund will help unlock strategic housing sites of importance to local authorities to increase the scale of housing delivery.

The move follows last week’s announcement of a £25m fund to build around 500 new affordable homes in rural areas. The Rural Housing Fund will increase the supply of long term affordable housing in rural areas over the next three years, by assisting the building of new homes and refurbishing existing buildings.

The fund is open to long-established affordable housing providers and also community-led organisations and private landowners, enabling them to take a more active role in meeting the housing needs of their community. As well as providing support toward the capital costs of housing projects, the fund will offer feasibility support to help organisations develop plans for their projects.

The announcements form part of the Scottish Government’s five-year £3 billion commitment to delivering at least 50,000 affordable homes, with 70 per cent for social rent.

Announcing the infrastructure fund, Scottish Government social justice secretary Alex Neil said: “The £50m infrastructure fund will help unblock sites that are strategically important to councils and that have the potential to accelerate the delivery of thousands of new homes across the country. To make that happen we will team up with public and private sector bodies to tackle complex development, financing, infrastructure and planning issues impeding housing supply.”

Scottish Land & Estates welcomed the launch of the Rural Housing Fund but said that a private housing policy was still needed. Katy Dickson, policy officer at Scottish Land & Estates, said: “We now need to see consistent private housing policy. The Scottish Government is providing this fund to assist the development of rural affordable housing while also taking the Private Tenancies Bill through parliamentary process. The Bill may result in a reduced number of landlords willing to let properties, particularly at affordable rents.

“The long term health of the private rented sector is absolutely crucial in rural areas where social housing is lacking. We fully support more security for tenants but this must come hand in hand with the robust and comprehensive grounds which landlords were promised at the outset of the Bill. We are now in a situation where the landlord’s position has been so eroded that there is little incentive to take on the risk of letting property, particularly at a lower than market rent.”