By Graeme Purves
In February 2026, during the opening salvos of the Scottish Parliament election
campaign, the Scottish Government launched a consultation titled Accelerating
Home-Building in Scotland. Having declared a national housing emergency in May
2024, Scottish Ministers were keen to stress the urgency of getting more houses
built, at a faster pace, now and in the years ahead.
In mid-2024 the Scottish Government estimated that planning permission was
already in place for at least 164,000 houses which had yet to be built. It is on
unlocking the potential of at least a proportion of this substantial landbank that the
consultation paper focuses. Housebuilders take the view that the number of houses
in the pipeline is substantially lower than the above estimate suggests because of
issues over ‘deliverability’. The arguments the consultation paper recites on effective
land supply and deliverability are not new. They have been debated between
housebuilders and planners for decades.
The consultation, which was billed as the starting point for a discussion about
measures that might be deployed to accelerate delivery, closed on 30 April and
responses are currently being analysed by Scottish Government officials.
The Scottish Land Commission on public interest
In reviewing recent work on housing delivery issues, the consultation paper refers to
a two-year study by the Scottish Land Commission which led to the publication in
2021 of the report Land for Housing: Towards a Public Interest Led Approach to
Housing Delivery. That report called for a move away from a housing land market
driven by private profit to one driven by the public interest and made sound
recommendations on how a public-sector led, public interest approach to housing
delivery could be taken forward. That agenda does not appear to be congenial to
Scottish Government housing officials, as the Commission’s recommendations are
not pursued in the consultation paper.
Fiscal and other measures to encourage delivery
Instead, officials have reviewed recent market-oriented initiatives in England, Ireland
and Wales in attempt to identify a package of measures that might encourage
housebuilders in Scotland to bring forward developments. The fiscal measures
identified include taxes, charges and levies, as well as tax reliefs or exemptions to
incentivise delivery. One of the other measures floated is the power for planning
permission to be revoked, without compensation being payable, where reporting
demonstrates that progress is unreasonably slow. Planning permissions are time
limited, but developers can keep them live by dragging out the process of purifying
conditions and beginning groundwork. It is unlikely that the threat of revocation
would be very effective in persuading housebuilders to deliver developments which
they are reluctant to take forward. It would be more likely to bog planning officials
down in unproductive work.
The potential measures officials have identified neither look convincing individually
nor as a package. Under the present private developer-led approach to housing
delivery, housebuilders bank planning permissions and develop sites at rates that
maintain market conditions favourable to themselves. As one leading housing expert
in Scotland has observed, trying to solve the housing crisis by regulating and
incentivising the private sector is like pushing a piece of string. A few extra sticks and
carrots with which to prod or cajole reluctant developers are unlikely to be as
effective as the public sector leadership from which the Scottish Government
appears to be shying away.
In its response to the consultation paper, Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS)
has expressed the view that the measures identified look complex to set up and hard
to get right in terms of fairness and effectiveness. APRS considers that the increased
bureaucracy involved in the monitoring and sanctions suggested in the consultation
paper is more likely to slow housing delivery down than speed it up and will be much
less effective than the public-sector led approach recommended by the Scottish
Land Commission.
Small building firms and the development hierarchy
Another suggestion in the consultation paper is that legislation might be brought
forward to amend the development hierarchy with a view to streamlining processes
on planning applications for smaller sites. The concern seems to be that, on
occasion, small developers have found the environmental burdens imposed on them
too onerous, contributing excessively to development costs. But good placemaking
and the enhancement of biodiversity are considerations that should apply at all
scales of development, small as well as large. National Planning Framework 4
already states clearly that measures should be proportionate to the nature and scale
of development. So planning policy already supports a ‘culture of proportionality’. If
there is concern that some planning authorities or their consultees are seeking to
extract disproportionate place-making or biodiversity benefits from small
developments, then, as the consultation paper suggests, the Scottish Government
should provide more explicit advice on proportionality.
In any case, it is unlikely that tinkering with the development hierarchy would make
any appreciable difference to the number of houses built nationally, even if small
building firms were to be exempted from place-making and biodiversity obligations
completely.
Diversifying outputs
It is the final section of the consultation paper, which seeks views on measures to
diversify the types and tenures of housing provided, that offers the greatest potential
for innovation and improvement, particularly in rural areas. In its response, APRS
expresses support for the encouragement of more diverse housing outputs. It shares
the Scottish Land Commission’s view that housing associations and community-led
initiatives have a vital role to play in delivering new homes in rural areas, where
small scale private and self-build construction has been in long-term decline.
One of the major public landowners in Scotland is Forestry and Land Scotland.
APRS believes that there is potential to create a substantial number of new
woodland crofts and homes with workspaces on the national forest estate. In an
article entitled From ruination to regeneration: re-peopling Scotland’s public forests in
Issue 71 of the journal Reforesting Scotland, Professor Douglas MacMillan and Euan
Stevenson argue that as many as 3,000 new woodland crofts could be created on
Scotland’s forest estate. Such measures could help deliver new and more diverse
housing options from a wider range of developers.
Conclusion
Having gained a Diploma in Housing Studies from University of Stirling, the new
Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Shirley-Anne Somerville, will well understand the
inadequacy of the neoliberal market-led model of housing delivery to which her
officials appear wedded. Meeting housing needs and creating places of quality are
public policy objectives. Public sector leadership is needed to address market failure
and in recognition that place is a public good. It must be hoped that the new Cabinet
Secretary will take the opportunity afforded to her to pursue the public interest
approach to housing delivery recommended by the Scottish Land Commission rather
than persisting with one that favours volume housebuilders, their shareholders and
the banks. The public interest approach is the route to ensuring that enough houses
are built, that they are built in the right places in developments of quality, and that the
full range of housing needs is met. Perhaps the new housing agency promised
during the 2026 Election might be set the task of putting that approach in place as its
first priority?
Dr. Graeme Purves was an Assistant Chief Planner with the Scottish Government.
He was Chair of Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) from 2014 to 2018 and
served on the UK2070 Commission on Regional Inequality between 2018 and 2021.
In 2019/20 he was expert adviser to the Welsh Senedd’s Climate Change,
Environment and Rural Affairs Committee during its scrutiny of the National
Development Framework for Wales. He is currently a member of the Board of Action
to Protect Rural Scotland.