This week, Homes for Scotland is highlighting the vital role that the country’s SME home builders play in helping to meet the housing needs of our local communities.
This follows recent publication of a comprehensive piece of independent research which found an alarming reduction in activity in this key sector, with the proportion of new homes sold by those building between three and 49 homes per annum having fallen from around 40 per cent in 2017 to less than 20 per cent in 2023. It also revealed that the number of SME home builders being dissolved in recent years has significantly increased.
In the context of what is now a nationally recognised housing emergency and a time when 28 per cent of Scottish households (693,000) have been identified as being in some form of housing need, such data should be ringing alarm bells through the top tiers of both the Scottish Government and local authorities.
Why should they care? And, perhaps even more importantly, why should wider civic society care?
Because we have to address the shortfall of +100,000 homes that has accumulated since 2008 - when SMEs were delivering more than twice as many homes than they are now.
Because over one-third of housing delivery in rural and remote areas, often more challenging from logistical and market perspectives, is where many SME developers efforts are focused.
Because SMEs are also crucial to unlocking brownfield sites (a priority for the planning system), accounting for over 90 per cent of such development in the main urban centres.
Because each home built supports 3.5 jobs and the overall developer contribution for each private sector home built is worth £30,500.
But ultimately because providing the new homes that this and future generations need is essential to improving health and education outcomes, underpinning Scotland’s social wellbeing and supporting the transition to net zero.
SME home builders are key to each of the First Minister’s stated priorities. However, whilst contending with the same issues affecting larger builders, they’re unable to leverage the same economies of scale and resource, making their operating environment even more challenging.
They need help to grow and thrive to deliver more homes: a faster, proportionate planning system; action to unlock small sites, especially on brownfield land; new innovative funding and partnerships.
With the UK Government having announced a wave of reforms aimed at increasing housing supply, our Awareness Week seeks to stimulate debate about the change that can be delivered at pace here.
We are delighted to be hosting the housing and planning ministers at a round table event tomorrow (Wednesday) where SMEs will have the opportunity to raise their issues and concerns. There is no doubt, however, that planning, and the wider consenting process, will be at the top of their lists of priorities. With the Programme for Government just weeks away, commitments to simplify planning for housing - reducing the burdens on hard-pressed planning departments and enhancing the viability of projects - are essential if we are to meaningfully start to tackle the housing emergency.
Jane Wood is Chief Executive, Homes for Scotland
Agenda is a column for outside contributors. Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk
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