Reporting Scotland is off and running first thing today with your daily dose of anxiety.
‘Scotland is facing a housing emergency!’
It’s about the supply of affordable housing but as always there’s no context.
I’m not saying it’s ever good enough in Scotland and I can remember when my family waited 7 years in a tenement flat, above a pub, with a stinking close and an outside toilet, before we got a decent council house, in the 1960s, after decades of Labour looking after (doing little) for Scotland.
Here’s some context:
From the impartial Grampian Online in January 2023:
Scotland has continued the trend of outperforming the rest of the UK in delivering affordable housing.
In the last financial year 9757 homes have been built for social rent, mid-market rent, and affordable ownership.
Scotland continues to outperform the rest of the UK by building 13.9 homes per 10,000 population, compared with 8.0 in Wales, 9.7 in England and 13.0 per 10,000 in Northern Ireland.
https://www.grampianonline.co.uk/news/scotland-outperforms-uk-in-building-affordable-housing-298925/
13.9 per 10 000 is 74% better than the 8 in Labour Wales
The historical trend?
Labour’s performance when they were in power in Wales, forever (?), nearly always worst.
Labour’s performance when they were in power in England, after 2010, always worse than SNP Scotland and, at times, worse even than Labour Wales.
Labour’s performance when they were in power in the UK until 2010, always worse than SNP Scotland.
Labour’s performance when they were in power in Scotland before 2007?
Looking specifically at social rent completions, from 2000-01 to 2006-07 Scottish Labour delivered 28,988 homes. In the period since the SNP assumed power, 52,558 homes have been delivered.
This works out as an average of 4,141 houses delivered per year under the Labour administration. Under the SNP, there have been 4,778 delivered on average each year.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Privately rented accommodation is the problem in Scotland.Well off people often not resident in Scotland , buying up property then letting it as holiday let or air BnB etc prevents young folk getting accommodation where they live .It’s more expensive to rent than it is to buy a property in Scotland with a mortgage that is why Scottish government are tackling this problem with LBBT land and building tax and ADS additional dwelling supplement.
Unless you are a first time buyer it will now be taxed 6% of the purchase price of a property in Scotland as a ADS.
LikeLike
Agreed, on the whole, although “It’s more expensive to rent than it is to buy a property in Scotland with a mortgage” isn’t quite as accurate as it used to be.
My daughter’s looking to buy in Edinburgh. There aren’t all that many available to start with. In the last 3 months – even with a sizeable deposit – she’s had to lower the price of properties she could afford to look at by £20-30,000.
The mortgage repayments have gone up by something like £3-400 per month and now equal her rent – which has also gone up. So much so that she’s wondering if it may be better just to carry on renting for a year or so. It’ll depend if the buy-to-let/AirBnB crowd moan about how badly done to they are and sell up. In the places we’ve looked at flats, sometimes entire tenements have key boxes. It’s a disgrace.
She still appreciates that she’s in a better position and is horrified at how bad it must be for average wage/small deposit people in her age group. She’ll certainly not be one of the “as people get older and are house owners they vote tory” crowd.
LikeLike