By Professor John Robertson
Today, the Scottish Government published Affordable Housing Supply Programme: quarterly updates on approvals, site starts and completions for the year 2023/2024.
I thought I’d compare this with the most recent data for England. There are doubts about just how affordable English builds are, but I’ll park that for now.
The first two rows are self-explanatory.
The third row suggests how many Scotland might have built if it had England’s population, 10 times greater.
The fourth gives the surplus Scotland built, per head of population, as many 40 751 more in 2022/2023. Note that the smallest surplus posted, in 2007/2008, was a consequence of the previous Labour government’s starts.
The fifth then suggests, as a percentage, how bigger a percentage surplus of affordable homes, per head, Scotland built. Nearly 400% more 2021/2022. Note that the smallest percentage surplus posted, in 2007/2008, was a consequence of the previous Labour government’s starts.
Finally, per head, the Scottish Government built 370 031 more affordable houses than England.
Sources:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Comparisons like this are odious to BBC Scotland – unless the results showed that the ” incompetent SNP Government ” ( copyright Anas Sarwar ) were lagging behind the ‘competent’ Westminster Government .
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I think you need to correct the headline. It cannot be 370000 per head! That would be 2 trillion more houses! ‘Pro rata’, perhaps?
However, if the Scottish media report this it will be ‘affordable housing completions in Scotland PLUMMET in 2024’.
Alasdair Macdonald
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