Scotland must not ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ with housing grant cuts, says Sturgeon

The devolved government in Scotland must be “innovative” in finding greater efficiency but should avoid “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” with cuts to housing grant, the former first minister has said.

Nicola Sturgeon, who led the devolved administration as leader of the Scottish National Party between 2014 and 2023, addressed housing professionals at CIH Scotland’s Housing Festival this morning.

The MP for Glasgow Southside prefaced her remarks by saying that they were not meant to be “criticisms of my successors in government” and acknowledging that there were “no easy options” financially for the Scottish government.

In Scotland’s most recent budget, at the start of last December, the government announced that it would restore £200m of funding for its affordable housebuilding programme for 2025-26, having cut it by a quarter last year.

However, she said that “good housing underpins almost every other objective a government will have”, meaning it has “got to be a priority”.

“I think there’s got to be in every walk of life right now innovation about how we do things, how we achieve the same outcomes,” she said, while warning that “we’ve got to be careful about how we do that”.

She drew on her own experiences as minister in charge of housing, when she attempted a similar move to the one recently taken by John Swinney’s administration last year.

“We thought we could make the budget go further by cutting subsidy levels and just getting, you know, more efficiency,” she said.

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“And we quickly realized that hit supply because we were going too far, so we recognize that and turn that around.

“So we need to find innovation greater efficiency, but we’ve got to be careful we don’t throw the baby out with the backwater. We do need to invest in greater supply.”

Sturgeon said there needed to be a mix of investment in supply with “innovative and fresh thinking” from the sector.