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HOMES FOR SCOTLAND'S PEOPLE: A Scottish Housing Policy Statement
MINISTERIAL FOREWORD
All of Scotland's people should have access to good quality, warm and affordable housing. Everyone has the right to a home - a space of their own where they can enjoy privacy and family life. Decent homes are essential to the health of individuals and to the well-being of communities.
People are at the core of the Scottish Executive's vision for housing in Scotland. Improving people's lives, wherever they live, is a fundamental goal of all our policies. Our policies must be shaped by the needs of individuals and families at all stages in their lives, and we must not lose sight of how our actions impact upon them.
If they are to succeed, our housing policies cannot overlook the needs of people such as the young couple struggling to set up their first home together, the tenant unable to get a fair deal out of his landlord in sub-standard housing, the elderly person unable to afford to heat their home or the middle-aged man suddenly without a home as a result of a family breakdown. If we are to make a difference, all of these must feel that
they have increased opportunity.
We are committed to ensuring that everyone in Scotland has a decent home to live in, regardless of their circumstances. Along with employability, education, health, access to local services and the environment, housing is fundamental to our work to close the opportunity gap and regenerate the most deprived neighbourhoods.
Having the right housing in the right place is also vital to economic growth. If people are to contribute most effectively to Scotland's economic prosperity, they need housing that allows them to move easily in response to varying
employment needs or to changes in their personal aspirations. An adequate supply of suitably priced homes is vital to help businesses attract potential employees while the house-building industry is in itself a significant employer and contributor to economic growth.
Our agenda is a broad one. We are concerned both with the housing market and with subsidised housing. We need to ensure that the housing system as a whole delivers the homes that Scotland's people need. In this document we set out how we have been tackling this demanding agenda; how our aim of providing good quality, warm and affordable housing is inextricably linked with policies in other areas; and how we propose to keep up the momentum we have generated since devolution.
Meeting people's housing needs goes alongside our aim to build strong and safe communities, to tackle anti-social behaviour and to regenerate disadvantaged areas. This document will necessarily focus on how our housing policies interact with and support our regeneration agenda, but it is our intention to publish a separate statement on our regeneration policies before the summer as a prompt for wider debate.
THROUGH OUR COMMITMENT TO HOMES FOR SCOTLAND'S PEOPLE WE WILL:
- Expand our investment in affordable homes. Public investment of £1.2 billion over the next three years, along with an estimated £500 million of private finance, will provide over 16,500 social rented homes and nearly 5,000 low cost homes - more affordable homes to help those who need them most.
- Increase our investment in affordable housing in rural areas beyond current record levels.
- Promote low-cost home ownership schemes (in both urban and rural areas) to help first-time buyers get a foot on the property ladder, including the new "Homestake" shared equity scheme which we expect will grow to help 1,000 new homeowners every year.
- Modernise the planning system, making it more proactive in releasing land through the development plan process and faster in the handling of applications for housing development.
- Set a benchmark in Planning Advice for 25% of all new private housing developments to be affordable homes for sale or rent.
- Invest in strategic water and sewerage infrastructure specifically to meet the capacity requirements for all estimated new housing developments.
- Ensure that firm, realistic plans are in place so that everyone living in the social rented sector lives in a home which meets the Scottish Housing Quality Standard by 2015.
- Take forward a Housing Bill to raise the quality of housing in the private sector and tackle the backlog of disrepair.
- Continue to promote community ownership, giving tenants more say in the management of their homes and releasing investment to improve the quality of housing and neighbourhoods. We now have 80,000 homes on the Community Ownership Programme which, subject to the balloting of tenants, will transfer to community ownership.
- Ensure that local authorities are able to offer all unintentionally homeless people the right to permanent accommodation by 2012.
- Spend £1.2 billion over three years through the Supporting People programme to help at least 80,000 vulnerable people to live independently in the community.
- Eradicate fuel poverty, as far as reasonably practicable, by 2016.
- Invest £318 million through our Community Regeneration Fund (and around £470 million in total) over the next three years in an integrated programme of initiatives to help revitalise Scotland's most deprived communities.
Although we have seen some notable successes in the last few years, we want to do more and we recognise the challenges that need to be confronted if our ambition is to be realised. This policy statement sets out our housing objectives and the means of delivering them. The actions, commitments and targets we set out in the following pages are a coherent part of the wider agenda we have set for ourselves in our Partnership Agreement, A Partnership for a Better Scotland, but we cannot accomplish this on our own.
Crucial to delivery is the partnership between the Executive and local government to ensure that national priorities are translated into the most appropriate responses to reflect local circumstances. Similarly, it is only through strong relationships with housing associations, the private sector and tenants that we will succeed in transforming aspiration into effective action. We are confident, however, that with the help of our partners we can make our vision a reality.
Malcolm Chisholm, MSP
Minister for Communities
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