Council grant subsidy for affordable homes increased to £406m

Scotland’s 32 local authorities are to share £406 million in grant subsidy in 2016/17 to deliver more affordable homes, the Scottish Government has announced.

The funding, which the Scottish Government refers to as Resource Planning Assumptions (RPAs), is over £100m more than last year’s allocation.

It is part of the government’s overall investment of over £572m to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) in 2016/17.

The remaining £166m will be managed centrally, with £80m already announced to help up 2,000 first time buyers under the Open Market Shared Equity Scheme. The rest will go to other projects that promote innovation, greener homes and the Home Owners’ Support Fund.

The overall funding will support delivery of between 8,000 – 9,000 affordable homes, the first part of a £3 billion investment to deliver 50,000 homes by 2021, and an increase of 28 per cent more homes than the average output in the last two years.

In addition to knowing their planning assumptions for 2016/17 councils also need as much advance notice as possible of their full RPAs for 2017/18 and beyond.

Therefore the Scottish Government is now committed to a new offer of five year resource planning assumptions for councils following the 2016 Spending Review.

Housing minister Margaret Burgess said: “Councils and registered social landlords are crucial to delivering the ambitious target of at least 50,000 affordable homes across Scotland over the lifetime of the next Parliament.

“This funding boost, together with our recent increase to housing subsidies, demonstrates our commitment to helping them achieve it. The certainty of long term funding will also allow councils to put in place the plans for affordable housing in their areas, not only adding momentum to building programmes, but also encouraging innovation and more efficient use of subsidy.

“It is estimated that the 50,000 Affordable Housing Supply Programme will support approximately 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs a year in the construction and related industries in Scotland over the next five years.

“This government is determined to increase the pace and scale of development to deliver more homes across all tenures. We have listened to our partners and are putting in place measures to support the increase in the supply of homes with our More Homes Scotland approach.”