Scotland’s housing emergency has held back living standards for almost two decades
Palma Oxley is a Researcher at the Fabian Society, working at the Fabian Housing
Centre
May’s elections will be seismic across the UK, but especially in Scotland. Housing is a key battleground issue that could help determine the outcome.
The Scottish election will take place two years since the Scottish Government declared a national housing emergency, presenting an opportunity either to reset Scottish housing policy or to entrench the mistakes of the past.
The housing emergency affects every Scottish community. Over 190,000 people have been pushed into poverty because their housing costs are so high, including 35,000 children. Nearly 250,000 people are on the social housing waiting list, with some families waiting up to a decade for a permanent home. The rise in housing costs has outstripped wage growth, with average house prices increasing by 47 per cent and average monthly private rents by 51 per cent between January 2015 and December 2025.
A recent report analysed these problems and proposed solutions for the next Scottish government. Housing the Future: How Scotland Can Build Homes Again, published by the Scottish Fabians and the Fabian Housing Centre, identifies one clear cause of the housing emergency: the failure to build enough homes. It is a failure which dates back almost two decades.
Back in 2007, the newly elected SNP government committed to increasing housebuilding in Scotland to 35,000 new homes a year by ‘the middle of the next decade’. Ministers said building around 10,000 extra homes a year was ‘achievable and necessary if [Scotland is to] reverse declining affordability’.
But instead of increasing housebuilding, the SNP government plunged the country into the worst housebuilding crisis since the Second World War. Nine of the 10 worst years for housebuilding since 1948 have occurred under their leadership. Between 2007-08 and 2024-25, Scotland experienced a 26 per cent reduction in the number of homes completed. Compared to their 2007 target, this sustained under-delivery has resulted in an estimated 250,000 ‘missing’ new homes in Scotland – roughly equivalent to a city the size of Edinburgh, or twice as large as Aberdeen.
This fall in housebuilding is due to unambitious and counterproductive government policy. For example, Scotland’s National Planning Framework does not even make housebuilding an explicit priority in its overarching principles. The Framework is also unduly restrictive, allowing development only on a limited number of ‘plan allocated sites’. As a result, Scotland’s largest developers currently hold land with detailed planning consent for just 53,000 homes. In short, the Framework is better suited to preventing homes than to delivering them.
On top of this, the SNP government has cut £197 million out of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme since the beginning of this parliament, despite the rising cost of building. Within months of these cuts, the delivery of nearly 2,000 affordable homes had been stalled.
This poor performance has political consequences. YouGov found that 67 per cent of respondents believed that increasing the supply of housing in Scotland would have a very or fairly positive impact on the country. And the SNP has lost the trust of Scotland on the issue – when respondents were asked how much they trust the SNP and John Swinney to handle the issue of housing in Scotland, 58 per cent said either ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all’.
The forthcoming election must lead to a reset in housing policy. The next Scottish Government should commit to an all-tenure housing target of 350,000 homes completed by 2036, including at least 33,000 in 2030-31.
But this time they must back this target up with effective policy. They should simplify planning decisions, build more homes where infrastructure already exists, and reform affordable and social housing funding by providing a five-year grant funding settlement for the Affordable Housing Supply Programme. They should establish More Homes Scotland by 2027 and give it the powers to increase housebuilding in every community. They should set out a reasonable ‘New Homes Standard’ that requires every new-build to be fit for the future and establish a ‘right to build’ to allow community groups to build affordable housing supply in rural, remote and island areas. These are just some of the proposals we set out in our report.
Scotland’s housing emergency has held back living standards for almost two decades. The next government must change course.
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