Government urged to create action plan one year after housing emergency declared

A Holyrood committee has urged the Government to create a national action plan to address the housing emergency.

MSPs voted to declare a housing emergency one year ago, following on from a similar move by local councils as homelessness reached record levels.

An inquiry by the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee found the housing emergency was “years, even decades in the making and was therefore both predictable and preventable”, according to convener Ariane Burgess.

Insight

Why can’t Scotland solve its housing emergency?

Vanessa Taaffe

As of September 30 last year, 16,634 households were living in temporary accommodation, including 10,360 children, with both figures the highest on record.

Figures for 2024 also show that the number of homes built dropped by 7%, while new homes started by construction firms fell by 9%.

The committee’s report urges ministers to create a plan and work across all Government departments to tackle the issue.

“The committee recommends that the Scottish Government develop a national overarching housing emergency action plan by the end of this session of Parliament in collaboration with the wider housing sector,” the report said.

“This should include clear milestones and outcomes to enable progress to be measured.

“A whole-systems approach is required that is led by the Scottish Government and its partners in order to stabilise housing in Scotland and help prevent future emergencies.

“The committee therefore recommends that the Scottish Government sets out how it will better coalesce its own departments around tackling housing need and ensure that wider policies across different portfolios can have a positive impact.”

Ahead of the anniversary of the declaration, Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville touted the Government’s action in the past year and its plans for the future, including spending £768 million on affordable housing, funding local councils, and investing £2 million in the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership to free up unused housing stock.

The committee also urged the Government to confirm how the increase in housing spending this year, around £200m from last year, will impact its target of building 110,000 affordable homes by 2032.

Ms Somerville said: “Providing everyone in Scotland the right to a warm, safe and affordable home is essential to our key priority of eradicating child poverty.

“The measures we have taken have meant increased investment in the affordable housing sector and fewer families living in temporary accommodation.

“As a result of our actions, an estimated more than 2,600 households with children have been helped into affordable housing in the year up to December 2024.

“We have delivered 136,000 affordable homes, with 97,000 of those for social rent, between 2007 and the end of December 2024.

“We are also working to identify and turn around empty private and social homes and encouraging more funding streams into the sector through our housing investment taskforce.

“It is encouraging that we are seeing a reduction in families in temporary accommodation in some local authority areas.

“However, we know there is more to do, which is why we have increased the affordable housing budget for this financial year by £200m to £768m. In the longer term, we will also introduce homelessness prevention measures and a system of long-term rent controls in our Housing (Scotland) Bill.

“We are determined to tackle the housing emergency and ensure that everyone in Scotland can have somewhere to call home.”

Scottish Labour housing spokesman Mark Griffin described the Government as “arrogant and out of touch”, adding: “Since the SNP was forced to declare a housing emergency a year ago, housebuilding has plummeted, the number of children in temporary accommodation has risen to a record high, and rent and house prices have continued to climb.

“The SNP’s Programme for Government has been described as a ‘programme for homelessness’ and its incompetent housing minister is still in a job.

“The SNP’s desperate spin won’t wash with the people who are living through the dire consequences of this housing emergency.”

Scottish Conservative housing spokeswoman Meghan Gallacher said: “This stark report makes it clear the SNP have been missing in action since finally agreeing a housing emergency was occurring on their watch.

“They have continued to recklessly support rent controls, which do not work, and have continued to ask cash-strapped councils to do more with less as they try to meet local demand for housing.

“With a record number of children in temporary accommodation and housebuilding collapsing across Scotland, the SNP Government needs to wake up.

“They should mark this anniversary by accepting that current housing policies are failing, ditch plans for permanent rent controls, and instead encourage much-needed investment into our flagging housing sector.”