The head of the representative body for home builders has criticised the lack of action on dealing with the housing emergency.

Homes for Scotland chief executive Jane Wood also highlights the challenging environment home builders in Scotland must operate within and the levers the Scottish Government can pull now to make an immediate difference.

The Herald is to be applauded for the tremendous public service it has undertaken over the last week by raising awareness of the scale and wide-ranging social impact of Scotland’s housing emergency.

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The decisive general election outcome offers new opportunities and refreshed political choices. As such, it has been very encouraging to see the new UK government placing a major emphasis on housing delivery and the planning system within 72 hours of it coming into power.

But, with these devolved matters north of the border, what, if anything, does this mean for the hundreds of thousands of  Scottish households that have been identified by independent research as being in some form of housing need?

With the Scottish Government acknowledging a national housing emergency in May, and housing starts and completions in ongoing decline, surely it must be obvious to all that we need to start doing things differently?

(Image: Homes for Scotland)

The figures we are releasing today showing that around 5000 new high-quality, energy-efficient homes have been stalled because of cuts to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme underscore both the importance and urgency of a new approach.

These alarming figures come on the back of recent research showing an alarming reduction in the SME home building sector.

This revealed that the proportion of new homes being sold by those building between three and 49 homes per annum has fallen from around 40 per cent in 2017 to less than 20 per cent 2023, with the number of companies being dissolved rising significantly.

Insights from builders point to the planning and the wider consenting process as having the biggest detrimental impact.

So funding and planning then – and absolutely no surprises to anyone at the coalface of housing delivery.

Will the Scottish Government recalibrate to tackle these challenges that are firmly in its grasp?

Will it bravely acknowledge that the root causes lie in underinvestment of our planning regime and a regulatory environment that fails to recognise the unintended consequences of policies created with poor understanding of the costs and impacts on both consumers and those organisations that build the much-needed homes of all tenures that we require?

Scotland’s population deserves better than the same old tired responses blaming Brexit, cost price inflation and Westminster.

These are, of course, significant issues but nowhere near as pressing as the risk and uncertainty of trying to navigate a planning system which takes over 62 weeks to process a major housing application or trying to determine long-term investment and construction programming against such a constrained financial backdrop – and these are factors adversely affecting both private for sale and affordable housing given the strong interdependencies across sectors.

(Image: NQ)

With another 18 months before the Scottish 2026 elections, there is time for impactful change but this requires strong political leadership, direction at pace and a joined-up approach across government at all levels.

Last month, we, along with colleagues at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Chartered Institute of Housing, Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Shelter Scotland wrote to the First and Deputy First Ministers calling for an urgent meeting and setting out priorities areas to be addressed.

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Declaring a housing emergency is meaningless if it only results in more of the same. We know what has to be done and it is frustratingly simple: build more homes and create the policy environment that facilitates it.

Nearly four weeks later, our letter still awaits a response.

Jane Wood is the chief executive of Homes for Scotland, the representative body for home builders. Its wide-ranging membership together delivers the majority of the country’s new homes of all tenures, spanning smaller developers, registered social landlords, larger home building companies, PLCs and associated businesses in the supply chain.