Study announced as Scottish housing stats show total housing completions rose 4% last year
The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has once again joined forces with Shelter Scotland and the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland to commission research into Scotland’s housing need once the current five-year government housebuilding programme ends in 2021.
The Scottish government launched a building programme three years ago based on a previous study commissioned by the three organisations in 2015 to build 50,000 new homes between 2016 and 2021.
That research had recommended the government aim for 60,000 homes.
New figures released this week show that in the year to September 2018 18,750 homes were completed, up 4% year-on-year.
Housing association completions rose by 35%, or 887 homes, while local authority completions rose by 8%, 116 homes.
In the year to the end of December 2018 total affordable housing completions totalled 8,867 homes, up 20% year-on-year, including social rent completions up 23%, or 1,050 homes.
Sally Thomas, the SFHA chief executive, said the latest research commissioned by the three bodies would be “critical” to ensuring that social housing providers delivered the housing the country needed.
Shelter’s Graeme Brown said that while the current building programme was the largest expansion of social housing since the 1970s “much more will needed to meet the demand that built up over the last 40 years”.
More than four years ago the SFHA teamed up with Shelter Scotland and CIH Scotland to commission an earlier project on housing need, with research carried out by Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Sheffield and the Centre for Housing Research at the University of St Andrews.
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