Glasgow affordable homes targets reduced after budget cut despite housing emergency

Glasgow’s affordable homes targets have been reduced after a “brutal” budget cut, despite the city facing a housing emergency.

Last year, the targets — which were missed — were to complete 1,415 affordable homes and have site starts on 1,043. In 2024/25, the aim is to finish 878 units and have 761 site starts.

Glasgow City Council had expected to receive around £104m to invest this year, but a £196m cut to the national affordable housing supply programme was announced by the Scottish Government in December.

Instead, the city is set to get £78.7m — a 24% reduction.

Council chiefs said the housing targets “reflect the available budget rather than the city’s need”.

Charity Shelter Scotland said the cut to the affordable housing budget must be reversed.

Councillors declared a housing emergency in November last year due to rising homelessness. Last week, national figures showed a record number of people in Scotland living in temporary accommodation, with 16,300 households as of March this year.

Shelter Scotland director Alison Watson said the reduced targets are an “inevitable, and entirely foreseeable, consequence of the Scottish Government taking an axe to the affordable housing supply programme in the last budget”.

She added: “As the recent homelessness statistics show, the situation in Glasgow has continued to deteriorate since it declared a housing emergency last year: without more social homes that trend will inevitably continue.

“It’s clear there’s work to be done at every level of government, including by Glasgow City Council, to address the housing emergency but local authorities can’t be expected to pick up the pieces on their own; the Scottish Government must reverse its brutal cuts to social housing when it publishes its budget this winter.”

Cllr Ruairi Kelly, SNP, city convener for neighbourhood services and assets, said a “huge cut to the Scottish capital budget is clearly having a knock-on effect to our local housing budget”.

“If the UK Government were to reverse this, then Glasgow stands ready to deliver significantly more houses in the coming years,” he added.

“The targets set in Glasgow reflect the available budget rather than the city’s need or the capacity of our RSL [social landlord] partners to deliver.”

Glasgow has received an extra £11.5m towards acquiring homes in 2024/25. It is estimated this could provide an additional 83 properties.

A council report revealed the 2023/24 targets were missed, with 1,353 completions and only 661 site starts. There were 821 approvals against a target of 878. For 2024/25, the approvals target is down to 489.

All of last year’s £103.6m budget was allocated to housing associations, but council officials reported “another extremely challenging year for the construction industry”.

They said construction inflation is “not as volatile as it has been in recent years” but “remains an issue”.

The report continued: “One development site programmed for approval in late 2023/24 was not approved until early 2024/25, hence this unit target was narrowly missed.

“Similarly, one large development site programmed to complete in late 2023/24 did not complete until early 2024/25.

“Unit targets for site starts were significantly under target due to a number of later than anticipated approvals. In the main, these were as a result of development cost increases, and underestimation in timing of securing statutory consents.”

Officials said a “higher level of approvals” for 2024/25 is “not possible due to current budget pressures and future budget uncertainty”.

They added: “A measured approach has been taken to approve priority projects to maintain momentum in programme delivery and mitigate against some of the risk of slowing development activity on future development capacity, the construction sector, and supply chains.”

The report concluded if further funding became available, Glasgow is “well placed to increase the number of additional affordable homes”.