What is the SNP doing to boost affordable housing?

Making sure that everyone has a safe, warm and affordable home is central to the SNP Government’s drive to make this country fairer and more prosperous.

Over the last Parliamentary term, the SNP Government invested over £1.7 billion in affordable housing. We exceeded our target of building 30,000 affordable homes by 2016 in October 2015, and by the end of the Parliamentary term we delivered 33,490 affordable homes including 5,992 council house completions. This compares to just six council homes completed in Labour’s last term of office in Scotland. We have also taken steps to safeguard social housing for the future by abolishing the right to buy, protecting 15,500 social rented sector homes.

In this parliament we have set a target to build at least 50,000 new affordable homes, of which 35,000 will be for social rent. In June 2017 the Housing Minister Kevin Stewart announced an investment of over £1.75 billion to support the government’s ambitious commitment of delivering 50,000 affordable homes by 2021. This funding will be spread over three years and shared amongst local authorities across Scotland

Much has been achieved in the first year of our new affordable housing programme – over 10,000 affordable homes were approved in 2016/17 – a 29 per cent increase on the year before. 7,000 of these approvals were for houses for social rent. In the same year, over 9,000 affordable homes were started – an increase of 21 per cent on 2015/16 – and 7,336 were completed – up by 13 per cent.