Hansard

As Karen Whitefield said, there cannot be a person in the chamber today who does not think that everyone in Scotland should have access to good-quality, warm, affordable housing. Along with good education, health and other core services, good housing has to be a basic tenet of any political party's beliefs. There is wide recognition that the Labour-led coalition has begun to make a difference by doubling investment in affordable housing since 2003. Since devolution, we have provided an additional 41,000 affordable homes, and in Stirling an extra 705 affordable homes. In total, the investment in affordable housing in the Stirling Council area is £37.7 million.

By the end of 2007-08, around £16 million will have been used for demolition and new build in the Cornton, Cultenhove and Middlemuir Road areas in Stirling. Additional investment will also bring much-needed new housing to Raploch, through the innovative urban regeneration company, as well as to other parts of Stirling. The Rural Stirling Housing Association has created developments in rural areas such as Aberfoyle, Balfron, Buchlyvie, Callander, Deanston, Drymen, Gargunnock, Gartmore, Killin, Kippen, Kinlochard, Strathyre and Tyndrum. In fact, two houses previously owned by Scottish Water will soon be opened at Stronachlacher, which was made possible through Scottish Executive funding.

The RSHA now owns and manages 430 homes. However, in Stirling itself, waiting lists are still relatively high, although there are fluctuations and the active applicants list is down at the moment. The RSHA list now stands at about 800 people, which is substantially more than it was three years ago.

The on-going expansion of homelessness legislation will increase substantially the number of statutorily homeless people referred to the RSHA by Stirling Council in the coming years, which will mean that there is less ability to meet the needs of non-statutory cases on the waiting list, although it is likely that there will be some transfer between the two groups—more people on the list will apply and be accepted as homeless. It is also likely to result in a greater need to provide support to a minority of homeless households to enable them to sustain a tenancy. The resources for such support, through supporting people funding, for example, will have to increase to meet that need.

When asked to list some of the obstacles in developing local affordable housing, the RSHA said that, first, there was a general lack of available land for acquisition. Stirling is a very pressured housing market area, and the owners of developable land know that it can command a high sale price. As a result, the housing association finds it difficult to compete. The amount of money the RSHA can offer for land on which to develop affordable housing is substantially less than what that land can fetch on the open market.

Under the affordable housing policy in the local plan for Stirling, a number of large sites designated for housing in the rural centres of Doune, Balfron and Callander must offer mixed housing and the developer must ensure that a percentage of that housing—usually 25 per cent—is affordable. That housing will usually be provided by the RSHA. However those sites are limited and simply form the bedrock for the development programme over the next five years or so.

Secondly, some settlements have infrastructure constraints. Although it continues to be difficult to secure an accurate picture from Scottish Water, it appears that sewerage capacity remains a problem in certain locations. I welcome the fact that more investment has been made in sewerage capacity, but there is still a large backlog of work that will likely take a long time to clear.

Thirdly, communities in Doune and Kippen, where future development is planned, recently identified the size of schools and the capacity of health centres as constraints. Indeed, I was alarmed to find out that Forth Valley NHS Board is not a statutory consultee on the planning application for housing in Doune. I wonder whether the minister will consider that particular loophole.

Fourthly, compared with prices in urban areas, it is generally more expensive per unit for the RSHA to develop housing because of factors such as land prices, the small-scale nature and relatively low density of developments, and the frequent need to invest in links to services and in road upgrading. As a result, the RSHA finds it more difficult to meet Communities Scotland's benchmark with regard to grant-per-unit indicators.

Finally I want briefly to mention some additional points that councils made in response to a survey that was issued last year by the cross-party group on affordable housing. On whether they had conducted housing needs assessments and had then used their findings to state a quantified land requirement for affordable housing, councils told us that they had not conducted needs assessments in time to inform their current plans or that the assessments were not robust enough to inform policy.

Secondly, most councils told us that their principal policy was to obtain land for affordable housing as a proportion of market sector housing. However, none of them claimed—or offered evidence—that the mechanism was sufficient to meet local needs.

In response to our question whether councils had safeguarded land, as suggested in planning advice note 74, the vast majority of councils—even those that had or claimed to have a shortfall in affordable housing—said that they had made no such allocation. In fact, only a few indicated any interest in doing so.

Councils also raised a number of general issues. For example, some highlighted the problems in planning affordable housing developments under the current Communities Scotland regime and felt that planning policies are not meeting land supply need—