In September, key players from Scotland’s housing market gathered in Edinburgh to discuss the future of the industry.
The annual Homes for Scotland conference at Dynamic Earth brought together the public and private sector – from builders to planners, funders to social housing associations – as well as the country’s senior politicians, including the deputy First Minster and leading figures from other main parties within Parliament.
Shepherd and Wedderburn was the headline sponsor and one of our own housebuilding legal experts, Partner Judith Stephenson, took part in the opening panel debate on ‘Addressing the Housing Emergency in a Changing Landscape’.
Judith received a spontaneous round of applause when discussing the failures of National Planning Framework 4 to address the Housing Emergency. This reflected the general consensus in the room that there are fundamental issues with housing supply in Scotland – and something major needs to change if the crisis level of the shortage is to be solved.
As Ivan McKie MSP, Minister for Public Finance, said – “the only way out of the housing crisis is to build more houses”.
This degree of consensus may be unusual for planning, but it is backed up by the statistics on housing delivery, which make for grim reading.
Recent research carried out The Diffley Partnership and Rettie with Homes for Scotland identified 28% of Scottish households (693,000 people) as having some form of housing need.
Other reports suggest that 250,000 people are on housing waiting lists across Scotland and over 33,000 have been assessed as homeless.
More than one third of local authorities have declared a housing emergency, in addition to the national housing emergency declared by the Scottish Parliament.
Hot on the heels of the Homes for Scotland conference, new figures emerged showing the number of new homes built in Scotland dropped 17% last year.
According to the Scottish Government’s own statistics, 19,293 new homes were completed in the 12 months to the end of June 2024.
Homes built by the private sector fell by 14% over the year to 14,240, with the number of properties built by councils and housing associations down by a quarter to 5,053.
Excluding 2020, when housebuilding was impacted by the pandemic, the number of new homes that were built from the start of July 2023 to the end of June 2024 was the lowest since 2018.
Approvals for affordable housing were also 44% lower than their peak in 2020.
That officially makes it the worst yearly start for housing on record.
While the Scottish Parliament and many local authorities have declared Housing Emergencies, these have no legal effect – and there is little evidence that they have had any meaningful impact on the delivery of new homes.
So, what could be done from a legal perspective that would have a positive impact on the numbers of houses being built in Scotland?
The Housing (Scotland) Bill is currently being considered by the Scottish Parliament. One of the themes coming out of the Homes for Scotland conference was the cross-party consensus that the Bill can and should do more to respond to the Housing Emergency.
Many will be familiar with Scotland’s 2045 climate change targets. These were introduced and made legally binding by changes to the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.
Legal duties apply to all public bodies in relation to the delivery of those targets and that has undoubtedly helped in the delivery of renewable projects through the planning system in Scotland – by shaping both planning policy and individual decisions.
These requirements are imposed because of the recognised need to address the climate emergency.
While the Scottish Government and Chief Planner have acknowledged the policy imperative of addressing the Housing Emergency, its priority status in the planning system has not yet been made crystal clear through actual decisions or through actual legal recognition.
One sensible option to emphasise the need for urgent action would be to ‘hardwire’ the Housing Emergency into the planning system. This could be done by requiring priority to be given to addressing the Housing Emergency.
The duty would apply to all planning decisions, and the preparation of local development plans, but would be time limited only for as long as the Housing Emergency remained in force.
This could be introduced to the planning system relatively easily via the Housing (Scotland) Bill and, unlike many of the recent changes to the system, would not place any additional regulatory burdens on Councils or applicants.
Addressing the Housing Emergency looks set to become an ever-increasing part of the political landscape as we move towards the Holyrood elections, with the Scottish Parliament reiterating on 2 October that Scotland is in a Housing Emergency.
Giving the Housing Emergency legal status will not solve the housing crisis on its own.
But there is an urgent need for new homes, and recognising this as a matter of law would be a relatively quick and cost-effective way of helping to ensure the planning system in Scotland plays its part.