The Scottish Government

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Building a Better Scotland

COMMUNITIES

To make Scotland a country where everyone has the opportunity to enjoy a decent quality of life through affordable housing, strong communities, access to employment and freedom from poverty, inequality and discrimination.

What we will do

The Communities portfolio is a portfolio of people and places. The portfolio's fundamental aim is to make Scotland a country where everyone has the opportunity to enjoy a decent quality of life. The portfolio seeks to achieve that aim by ensuring a sufficient supply of good quality affordable housing; building strong, safe communities; helping individuals escape from poverty; improving access to employment; and tackling all forms of discrimination and prejudice.

In everything that we do we are committed to ensuring that we work to grow the economy, to promote equality and close the opportunity gap, and to ensure that our activities are sustainable. For example, we will promote equality by challenging racism through the One Scotland Many Cultures campaign, raising awareness of the gender pay gap and supporting women facing multiple discrimination to move into work and training, and we will close the opportunity gap by regenerating Scotland's most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. More detailed information about the Executive's work in these cross-cutting areas is given in the cross-cutting chapters earlier.

Over the Spending Review period, our main priorities are:

Affordable housing

In response to a major review of the Scottish housing market and requirements for affordable housing, we will substantially boost investment in improving the supply of affordable housing in all areas of Scotland. In particular, we will:

• commit the necessary funding to achieve and exceed the Partnership Agreement commitment on new and improved homes for social rent and low cost home ownership over the 3 years 2005-2008;
• work with social landlords to ensure that firm, realistic plans are set in train to bring all stock up to the new Scottish Housing Quality Standard by 2015;
• ensure that funding is available to support the transfer of 70,000 houses into community ownership;
• continue to work towards our long term target that, by 2012, every homeless person will have the right to be offered permanent accommodation;
• extend the current Central Heating Programme to ensure that all elderly people on lower incomes live in energy efficient homes; and
• ensure the sustainable development of the Supporting People programme which is vital to allow people to live independently.

Building stronger, safer communities through regeneration and tackling anti-social behaviour

• We will invest in services in our most disadvantaged communities to tackle poverty and inequality and work with those communities to find solutions to the problems that they face;
• we will continue to provide financial support for action by agencies at local level to deal more effectively with anti-social behaviour and its consequences;
• we will support practitioners in using the new legal measures introduced by the Anti-social Behaviour Etc. (Scotland) Act 2004;
• we will support the expansion of community warden schemes across Scotland, and evaluate their effectiveness;
• we will publish an accountability framework, including performance and outcome indicators, so that progress in tackling antisocial behaviour can be monitored effectively at local and national level; and
• we will continue to work with the pathfinder Urban Regeneration Companies and through the Vacant and Derelict Land Fund to improve the liveability and desirability of some of our most blighted neighbourhoods.

Tackling poverty

• We will give clear emphasis to Closing the Opportunity Gap, to ensure our resources are used to tackle poverty, deprivation and disadvantage;
• we will increase our investment in childcare provision in disadvantaged areas, to ensure that this is not a barrier to work; and
• we will develop our financial inclusion activity to give disadvantaged communities knowledge of and access to appropriate financial products and services and to help people with debt problems.

Underpinning these three priorities will be the mainstreaming of equality and the promotion of equal opportunities.

In order to address these three priorities, we will:

• provide a total of 345/347/389m for new supply and replacement of affordable housing. This means an increase in direct spend by the Executive on affordable housing from 286m in 2004-05. The figures rise to 378/376/418m when receipts and funding from council tax on second homes are taken into account;
• invest a total of 104/106/108m on the new Community Regeneration Fund to improve Scotland's most deprived areas and help individuals and families escape poverty;
• offer a new Closing the Opportunity Gap Fund;
• spend an extra 5/5m on the Working for Families Fund; and
• increase our capital investment by 33/68m.

We will also ensure that we secure the best possible value for money over the period covered by this Spending Review. We will do this by working with the Registered Social Landlord sector to develop existing and new techniques for improving the efficiency of the procurement of affordable housing, and ensuring that the Supporting People programme operates more effectively. We have also re-profiled spending on Community Ownership to reflect the expected timing of individual stock transfers.

Moreover, the spending power of the Communities portfolio has been substantially increased as a result of:

• the early redemption of Scottish Homes debt, producing savings and receipts of 31/27/ 27m; and
• the decision to allow councils to reduce the council tax discount on second homes for spending on affordable housing, which we estimate could increase spending on affordable housing by 20/20/20m.

This additional spending power is equivalent to an increase of over 5% for the portfolio over the period 2005-08.

In addition to expenditure within the Departmental Expenditure Limit set out below, Total Managed Expenditure for the Communities portfolio includes provision in relation to the Supporting People programme much of which is classified as Annual Managed Expenditure.

Table 9.01 Spending plans 2004-08 (level 2)

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