Hansard

Three months ago, I confirmed the Executive's intention to publish a draft housing bill next year. I am pleased now to be able to outline some of the key elements of the bill.

Today's statement sets out the future foundations for Scotland's social housing. The statement and the discussion papers that we published earlier this week will provide the basis for a full parliamentary debate early in the new year.

Our housing proposals provide the foundations for a Scotland where everyone matters and where every community offers a range of warm, secure housing options—public and private, rented and owned, starter and sheltered homes. We have opted for a fundamental rethink of Scottish housing, because it is only by a new approach that we can end the situation whereby some Scottish children are born, their parents live and their grandparents die in damp houses. In earlier generations, it was Labour politicians in urban Scotland and Liberal politicians in rural Scotland who argued for a new and better way. That is how it should be in our time also.

In a week in which we have seen shock health statistics about Glasgow, we should remember that it was the first ever Labour health minister, John Wheatley, who set out the legislative framework that led to the building of more than 100,000 new homes. We should be no less bold in finding new solutions for our time.

The choices that we have are not only public versus private housing and security for tenants versus insecurity. The real choices are new investment versus no investment, tenant control versus municipal control and community renewal versus stagnation.

This statement lays the groundwork for new solutions, which start with tenants. Scotland should no longer tolerate second-class social tenancies, rights or landlords. Earlier this week, we laid out in a discussion document our plans for a single social tenancy. We are offering Scottish tenants the best tenants' rights package ever. It offers new rights to succession, particularly for carers, new rights of consultation for tenants about decisions that affect their homes and discussion of new rights to exchange. By creating one common tenancy, we remove at a stroke the anxieties of all those who fear that community ownership might affect their tenancy rights. The right to buy will continue to be part of that new single social tenancy, but we know that changes are needed, and we shall make them.

The starting point is to understand and accept what most Scots want. In 1965, less than 20 per cent of Scottish households were looking to buy their own home. Now, well over 80 per cent of households aspire to own their own home. We will reform the right to buy to make it right for the next century. We will introduce a factoring scheme for former right-to-buy tenants, we will protect more special needs housing from sale and we will cap discounts at £30,000.

The discussion paper sets out our proposals in detail, but I would like to dwell on one important point that has come out of our work. Some commentators have expressed concern at the loss of socially rented houses in some rural areas through the right to buy. It is clear, however, that the underlying problem is the differences in availability of socially rented housing across Scotland: just 14 per cent of houses are available for social rent in Orkney, whereas 50 per cent are available in Glasgow.

The shortage of socially rented housing in some areas, including rural areas, reflects the historic lack of investment in those areas, rather than the effect of the right to buy itself. I have asked Scottish Homes to review its expenditure in rural areas and to make proposals to help redress the imbalance. In the short term, I have also asked Scottish Homes to increase the resources available for investment in rural areas when it draws up its programme for next year. Over the longer term, a reordering of development priorities is required.

Let me make clear to the chamber the opportunity that lies before us. What would it take to ensure that one in four homes in Orkney, the Western Isles, Aberdeenshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Perth and Kinross, Argyll and Bute, Moray, Highland and Scottish Borders was for rent? The answer is that it would take only 14,000 new rented homes. We have pledged to build 18,000 new homes over the next three years. Of course, not all those homes will be in rural areas— there are other priorities in urban areas, such as community care and homelessness—but the aspiration of a vibrant socially rented sector in all parts of Scotland is achievable.

All social tenants deserve consistently high standards from housing management, so we will legislate for a single system of statutory regulation for all social landlords. The landlord functions of local authorities will also be subject to the same performance standards as apply to registered housing associations, and they will be regulated by the same body.

We are committed to a more strategic role for

local authorities. We will put local authorities in the lead in developing single housing plans for their areas. Local authorities should also have a greater say in the allocation of resources to other housing providers in their areas. Once the existing housing stock has been transferred—if that is what tenants choose—and there is no question of an in-built bias towards expenditure on their own stock, we believe that local authorities should be responsible for determining the priorities for all funding of housing in their areas.

Local authorities will therefore have a much more direct involvement than at present in decisions on the £200 million of development funding resources currently made available through Scottish Homes. Those resources will be part of a transparent and identified budget for housing purposes, which will be designed to achieve the housing policy objectives of the Executive and of local authorities. Obviously, there will have to be a process of adjustment. We plan a range of checks and balances, and Scottish Homes has a vital monitoring role in that.

That brings me to the future of Scottish Homes. Over the past 10 years, Scottish Homes has achieved a great deal, developing the housing association movement in Scotland, attracting around £1.3 billion of new private investment into social housing and empowering its own tenants by successfully transferring most of its stock to new social landlords. I pay tribute to the commitment, skills and expertise of its board members and staff over the past decade. They have nurtured community ownership, and their leadership has demonstrated that non-profit-making community- controlled local landlords across Scotland can both build homes for rent and access new investment.

Scottish Homes has done pioneering work by demonstrating that housing is about more than bricks and mortar. It has supported the development of roles for local housing associations, which place them at the heart of their communities, whether through credit unions and services to older tenants or by providing workspaces.

The new agenda for Scottish housing means a new organisational structure for Scottish Homes. We have concluded that Scottish Homes should cease to be a quango and should be converted into an executive agency of the Scottish Executive. In future, the chief executive will have a direct reporting line to ministers and, through that, accountability to this Parliament. The work of Scottish Homes will be steered by a management board, including two or three non-executive directors. The board will be led by the chief executive and will operate within a framework set by ministers.

In that new challenging role, Scottish Homes will assume responsibility for the regulation and monitoring of all registered social landlords— whose number will be much swollen by community ownership—and also of the landlord functions of local authorities.

There is a clear opportunity to broaden further the community regeneration role of Scottish Homes as a housing and communities agency, liaising with social inclusion partnerships and other local regeneration initiatives. The real expertise in using housing as an enabler of community regeneration lies within the existing regional structure of Scottish Homes.

Scottish Homes will continue to be responsible for development funding until such time as local authorities cease to be major landlords in their own right and take over that budget.

We want to implement those changes in a way that builds on the valuable work that has been done by Scottish Homes and which enables its staff to prosper in the new structure. I anticipate that the vast majority of Scottish Homes staff who transfer to the Scottish Executive will work in the new executive agency. However, some staff who undertake policy and related work in the headquarters of Scottish Homes could move directly into other parts of the Scottish Executive, to help to strengthen its policy capabilities.

I want to make it clear that the decision has been taken for good housing and social inclusion policy reasons. It is not part of a broadside at quangos in general and, in practice, the vast majority of the staff of Scottish Homes will continue to do much the same type of work as at present, but in a different governance framework. I am today writing personally to all Scottish Homes staff to reassure them about that.

We have had a number of debates in the chamber on other areas, notably on the scourge of homelessness and the policy and new resources required to tackle it. I have asked the homelessness task force to recommend its legislative priorities early in the new year and I will make a further announcement on those elements of the proposed housing bill in due course.

Our ambition is to create strong and supportive communities across Scotland. We will deliver a radical housing bill, which will lay the firm foundations for creating a Scotland where everyone matters, whether they are tenants, owner-occupiers or people sleeping rough. Our vision for Scottish housing is one that any modern nation could be proud of.

I commend the statement to members.