Almost a quarter of Scottish councils built no new homes in the last year. Seven of Scotland’s 32 local authorities built zero homes in the last year, according to the Scottish Government’s official figures.
Angus, Clackmannanshire, Orkney, South Lanarkshire, Shetland and West Dunbartonshire built no new local authority homes in the year up to June.
It comes after the Scottish Government declared a housing emergency earlier this year. Just last week SNP First Minister John Swinney was called on to sack his “inept” Housing Minister Paul McLennan over the growing homelessness crisis across the country.
There were 1,573 local authority-led house completions in the year up to June 2024. During the same period, construction began on 1,295 homes.
This is a 20 per cent decline on the previous year, with 398 fewer homes built. Some 152 fewer house builds were started by local authorities in the year up to June 2024, a fall of 11 per cent.
A Scottish Government spokesman told The Herald: “All of the councils mentioned have affordable homes supply through other methods such as acquiring empty properties or delivering new builds alongside social landlords.
“We have a strong track record in supporting the delivery of more affordable homes – with more than 133,000 homes completed since 2007, including more than 94,000 social rented homes.
“We will continue to build on that record with a total investment of almost £600 million in affordable housing this year, the majority of which will be for social rent, including supporting acquisition of existing properties.
“We have made record funding of more than £14 billion available to councils in 2024/25 to deliver a range of services, including in homelessness services, and we will continue to support councils to tackle the crisis.”
Scotland’s housing crisis deepened last week as the number of children stuck living in temporary accommodation reached a record high.
The “shameful” figures published by the Scottish Government showed 10,100 kids were staying with their families in B&Bs or hotels as of March this year, an increase of five per cent on 2023.
The total number of households living in temporary accommodation reached 16,330 in the same period, a rise of nine per cent in just one year. The number of Scots who said they had slept rough the night before applying for help also rose from from 1,493 to 1,916.
It comes at a time the number of new homes built for social rent has plummeted by 25 per cent. SNP ministers previously slashed almost £200 million from the affordable housing budget.
To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here