Meeting of the Parliament 18 November 2015
The Scottish Government is clear in its recognition of the critical role that housing plays in promoting social justice, strengthening communities and tackling inequalities. Our approach to tackling the full range of housing issues is both inclusive and comprehensive. We value the views of our partners and communities, as our integrated and collaborative approach to developing a joint delivery plan for housing has demonstrated. We know the issues and we are working in partnership to deliver the solutions. If we were not constrained by the 26 per cent cut in our capital budget that has been imposed by Westminster, we would be making even faster progress. However, even with those constraints, Scottish Government investment of £1.7 billion in affordable housing over the current session of Parliament means that we have made huge progress.
The Government has delivered 19 per cent more social rented homes over the past seven years than the previous Administration did over a similar period. We have delivered 34,633 social houses over the past seven years, whereas the Labour/Liberal Administration delivered 28,988 houses. To date, we have helped to fund the delivery of 5,666 completed council houses, which contrasts with the delivery of only six under the previous Labour/Liberal Administration.
The latest published statistics showed that we were 93 per cent of the way towards our overall target and 96 per cent of the way towards our 20,000 social rented homes target.