The report brings together quantitative and qualitative evidence to inform the Scottish Government’s wider review.

The Scottish Government said it will reflect on the findings and set out next steps in due course.

The purpose of the research is to inform Scottish Government’s review of existing developer contributions mechanisms by bringing together evidence under two broad themes:

• Quantitative: How much are existing mechanisms raising, what purposes are they being used for and how does this vary geographically?
• Qualitative: How effective are existing mechanisms and what are the practical issues associated with their use?

Based on the evidence that the Scottish Government were able to collect, it has estimated that in 2019/20 approximately £490 million worth of developer contributions were agreed, of which £310m was for affordable housing and £180m towards infrastructure.

In 2017/18 the equivalent figure for affordable housing (excluding commuted sums) was £251m and that for 2018/19 was £220m. Thus, the agreed contributions for affordable housing has increased by more than a third over the three-year period.

The Scottish Government was not able to provide estimates of the contributions to infrastructure for the two earlier years as the data were not available. The figures for 2019/20 were grossed up from the available data.

The report has also found that the value of developer contributions is concentrated in a relatively small number of areas.

The five largest contributing authorities, all in the central belt, accounted for about 43% of agreed contributions towards affordable housing in 2019/20. This proportion had declined from around 50% in 2017/2018, suggesting that their use had become more widespread. With respect to infrastructure the proportion was around one-third of the grossed-up figure.

The full report can be found here.