Scottish Government commits to increasing housing supply

The Scottish Government has highlighted a range of measures it has taken to increase investment in housebuilding and help reduce the number of households in temporary accommodation since declaring a housing emergency last year.

In 2024/25, £600 million was invested in affordable housing, £40 million of which was used to purchase properties and bring empty social homes back into use.

An extra £1 million was made available to Registered Social Landlords and third sector organisations to prevent homelessness and support people to stay in rented accommodation.

The latest figures show that the number of households in temporary accommodation has reduced in 12 council areas.

Over the coming year, further action will be taken to tackle the housing emergency and ensure more people can access a safe and affordable home, including investing £768 million in this financial year in affordable housing, which will support the delivery of 8,000 homes for social and mid-market rent and low-cost home ownership.

Local authorities will be provided with £15 billion this financial year for a range of services, including in homelessness services and £2 million will be invested through the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership to continue to reduce the number of privately owned empty homes.

Commenting, Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “Providing everyone in Scotland the right to a warm, safe and affordable home is essential to our key priority of eradicating child poverty. The measures we have taken have meant increased investment in the affordable housing sector and fewer families living in temporary accommodation.

“As a result of our actions, an estimated more than 2,600 households with children have been helped into affordable housing in the year up to December 2024.

“We have delivered 136,000 affordable homes, with 97,000 of those for social rent, between 2007 and the end of December 2024. We are also working to identify and turn around empty private and social homes and encouraging more funding streams into the sector through our Housing Investment Taskforce.

“It is encouraging that we are seeing a reduction in families in temporary accommodation in some local authority areas. However, we know there is more to do which is why we have increased the affordable housing budget for this financial year by £200 million to £768 million. In the longer term we will also introduce homelessness prevention measures and a system of long-term rent controls in our Housing Bill.

“We are determined to tackle the housing emergency and ensure that everyone in Scotland can have somewhere to call home.”