Following on from SNP conference the week before, last weekend the SFHA team were in two places at once at both the Scottish Greens and Scottish Liberal Democrat conferences.
At both conferences,we hosted joint events with CIH and Shelter Scotland as part of our shared piece of research into affordable housing need for 2026-31. Carolyn Lochhead, Director of External Affairs at SFHA, spoke at the Greens conference alongside Patrick Harvie MSP who was the Scottish Government Minister for Tenants Rights and Zero Carbon Building during the Bute House Agreement. At the Lib Dem conference, Eli Harji, Policy Lead at SFHA, spoke alongside party leader Alex-Cole Hamilton.
SFHA, Shelter and CIH all spoke to our recent joint research that found Scotland must build over 15,000 affordable homes each year during the next Parliament to meet the level of need. The total cost of this would be around £8.2billion. Both parties set out their commitment to ending the housing emergency, and that support for housing associations would be key to this – although what this support might look like differs between the parties.
At the Green conference, there was a really engaged audience who were interested in all aspects of the housing system including the Housing Bill which started life as a ‘Green’ piece of legislation, land provision, accessible housing, tenants’ voice, and unsurprisingly there was a real focus on affordability and how that must be central to plans on housing.
At the Lib Dem conference, the audience were equally engaged and there was a real focus on social housing. There was further interest in aspects of the homelessness system, the potential role of alternative forms of private finance, the balance in investment between new supply and existing stock, and the need to invest in skills.
Our call at each event has been straightforward. Every party standing for election must put social home-building front and centre of its plans for Government and that the next Parliament cannot be the one that fails on social housing.
We have one last party conference for the year which will take us to Scottish Labour’s one day policy conference in November and this is likely to be the last conference before the Holyrood elections in May of next year.
