Scottish executive sets up £6m fund to buy social housing sites

The Scottish Executive has helped to set up a £6m fund to tackle the affordable housing crisis in the Highlands.

The money will be used to purchase land for affordable housing in the region.

The executive, through Communities Scotland, will provide £3m of the funding, with local authority Highland council contributing the remainder of the money, which it will raise from proceeds generated from tax on second homes in the region.

The Communities Scotland/Highland council partnership will acquire the sites before selling them on to housing associations. Any surplus land could be sold on to private developers at a profit. Highland council expects the fund to have topped £10m by 2007.

The council hopes to build about 500 homes a year under the scheme. The Highlands is currently losing about 650 homes a year under the right to buy.

The scheme was developed in conjunction with the Highland Rural Partnership for Change, which was established by the Scottish executive in order to produce a plan for tackling the shortage of social rented housing in rural communities.

Communities minister Malcolm Chisholm said: “The Partnership for Change identified that little land came onto the market in the Highlands, other than large estates or whole farm units, and that the development of affordable housing was dependent on the outcome of negotiation with landowners.”

Highland council hopes the scheme will eventually enable it to replace all the homes it loses each year through right to buy.

Sheena Slimon, vice-chair of housing and social work at Highland council, said: “Even if we build 500 homes per year, we will still be minus 150 through right to buy. Hopefully, this will allow us to break even.”

A Highland council report published last November said homeless households in the Highlands had doubled in the previous two years (HT 12 November 2004, page 12).

Slimon added that the cost and location of sites purchased would depend on negotiations with landowners across the Highlands. She was unable to reveal more on whether the sites would be greenfield or brownfield, or where they would be located.