News article 5/12/2012

(Issued 5 December 2012) 
 

Responding to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, Scottish home building industry leaders welcomed the £394m of additional capital funding which the Scottish Government will receive as a consequence of today’s announcement and made an immediate call for as much of the new money as possible to be ploughed into housing.

Philip Hogg, Chief Executive of home building industry body Homes for Scotland, whose members provide 95% of new homes built for sale as well as a significant proportion of affordable housing, said:

“Whether helping to meet housing need, maximising economic return, creating vital jobs, maintaining skills, meeting climate change targets or tackling fuel poverty, no other industry has the potential to impact so many policy areas so positively and effectively as home building. Against any measure, therefore, it makes sense to maximise investment in housing.

“So we look forward to further announcements from the Scottish Government on how this new funding, together with any consequentials arising from previously announced details of £10bn of guarantees across the UK to support the building of first time buyer, affordable and rented homes as well as £225m to accelerate the delivery of large housing sites, will be allocated.

“There are also other areas with the Autumn Statement that we will be urging the Scottish Government to closely consider. These include the release of public land for development and the UK Government’s objective of reducing the net burden of regulation on business through a new “one in, two out” rule which requires the cost of new regulation to be offset by deregulation delivering at least double the savings. This is particularly relevant to the home building industry in Scotland given proposed changes to Building Standards which threaten to add as much as £12,000 onto the cost of building a new home.”

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