Future Operation of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme
2012/13 to 2014/15
The supply of new affordable housing remains a high priority for the Scottish Government, which has made clear its commitment to deliver 30,000 affordable homes, of which at least two thirds will be for social rent, during the lifetime of this Parliament.
Councils and housing associations have stated that a sustained, forward-looking, planned and strategic approach is necessary to deliver the 30,000 homes. Following discussions with our stakeholders, the Housing Minister wrote to COSLA in January 2012 to confirm that we will now move to a system which allows local authorities and housing associations to plan ahead more efficiently. From 2012–2013 a resource planning approach will be adopted, based on the following principles:
- We have discontinued challenge funding for the main part of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP), including council house building.
- Council and registered social landlord funding streams have been brought into one budget and from this, each council has been given a combined three-year resource planning assumption through to March 2015.
- This approach will enable each council to exercise its strategic role more flexibly, and to put forward to Government a programme of social and affordable housing developments, based on the Local Housing Strategy and SHIP.
- Our Housing Supply area teams will agree these programmes with the councils.
- On considering the programmes it is not our intention to query each council’s strategic vision, but we will wish to ensure that the overall balance of the programme, the respective subsidy levels for council and RSL projects, the mix of developers in each area, and other matters, are in line with the Government’s national strategies for housing supply.
- The Scottish Government will continue to hold and manage the budget centrally and to make payments to both councils and housing associations on completion of their approved projects (or at an earlier point in the development if there is capacity to do so).
- We have discussed with TMDF authorities the arrangements for the programmes in their areas as part of this new process.
- A central budget will be retained by us for other parts of the AHSP, and we may use challenge fund approaches for some of this, for example to incentivise further innovations.
Following consultation with our partners the detailed arrangements for taking this new process forward have now been finalised. The new guidance on the future operation of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme introduces a new, stronger strategic role for councils and sets out more detailed benchmarks for government subsidy, including an additional £4,000 per unit for homes built to a greener standard.
- Full details of the new procedures are set out in HSGN 2012/06.
The Resource Planning Assumptions represent an investment of almost £582 million in housing over the next three years, including the TMDF budgets for Glasgow and Edinburgh which were announced earlier. This is part of the Government investment of at least £710m in the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP).
Footnote - the sample photos which will appear on this page are from across Scotland showing developments which have been funded from the AHIP Programme.