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Housing Statistics for Scotland - New House Building

Ruchill housing

New House Building in Scotland

  • Historic trends in new build showed peaks in the early 1950s and late 1960s resulting primarily from programmes of post-war reconstruction and slum clearances.
  • From a high point of about 41,000-43,000 completions a year, mainly in the public sector, the level of new build fell during the early 80s to under 20,000 completions per year.
  • Since then, there has been an overall upward trend to just under 25,000 completions per year during the past few years, mainly due to private sector new build which currently represents over 80% of all completions. The remainder of new build is predominantly by housing associations.
  • In 2007-08, there were 25,700 completions in Scotland, an increase of 7% on the previous year. Starts however, fell by 7% from 28,400 in 2006-07 to 26,400 in 2007-08.

Scotland Tables

Scotland Tables

Local Authority Tables

  • All sectors starts and completions
    Quarterly, financial year and calendar year time series of starts and completions by all agencies, by local authority area - from 1996 quarter 2 to 2008 quarter 2.
  • Private sector starts and completions
    Quarterly, financial year and calendar year time series of private sector starts and completions, by local authority area - from 1986 quarter 1 to 2008 quarter 2.
  • Local authority starts and completions
    Quarterly, financial year and calendar year time series of local authority starts and completions, by local authority area - from 1986 quarter 1 to 2008 quarter 2.
  • Housing association starts and completions
    Quarterly, financial year and calendar year time series of housing association starts and completions, by local authority area - from 1992 quarter 2 to 2008 quarter 2.
  • Greenfield / brownfield completions for private sector new build
    Information on the type of site has been collected since around 2001, but coverage is not yet complete. These tables show the proportion of private sector new build completions where the site type is known, and of those, the proportion of completions on brownfield or greenfiled sites.
  • New build completion rates
    All sector new build completion rates - per 1000 households and per 1000 population, by financial year


Note: In all new build tables, starts and completions in the former New Towns are included in the appropriate district figures.

Supply of new housing in Scotland

Data on housing supply informs National Indicator 32 (Increase the rate of new house building) in the Scottish Government's 2007 Spending Review, and comprises the following elements:

  • new house building: houses completed by or for housing associations, local authorities or private developers for below market rent or low cost home ownership; houses completed for market sale by private developers.
  • refurbishment: houses acquired by housing associations and refurbished either for rent or low cost home ownership. Refurbishment of private dwellings funded wholly or partly through the Affordable Housing Investment Programme.
  • conversion: new dwellings created by conversion from non-housing to housing use.

Link to new housing supply table

Background information on this indicator can be found on the Scotland Performs web pages

Page updated: Thursday, November 20, 2008