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Housing completions in Scotland still below pre-COVID levels
Scottish house builders have warned that the government’s latest statistics on housing completions reveal how “far behind we still are”.
The latest quarterly release shows that 20,767 homes across all tenures were built in the year to March 2022.
This was a 40 per cent increase on the previous year, after pandemic-related restrictions saw completions plummet by a third.
But despite this leap in new homes, the latest annual figure is still 6% below the 22,124 homes completed in the year before the pandemic to the end of March 2020.
Homes for Scotland (HFS), a trade body representing Scottish house builders, said the data shows that the industry still faces major challenges.
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Jane Wood, chief executive of HFS, said: “These figures demonstrate the resilience of the homebuilding sector after completion levels dropped below 15,000 in 2020-21.
“However, they also show how far behind we still are, so it is frustrating that there is such a timelag in reporting, particularly when we continue to face major obstacles to achieving sustained growth, not least of which include planning, material and labour shortages as well as increased costs.”
In its breakdown of completions by tenure, the newly published data shows that in the year to March 2022, there were increases in the completions of private sector homes (29%, or 3,157 homes), local authority homes (87%, or 1,256 homes) and housing association homes (63%, or 1,488 homes).
In response, the Scottish government said the affordable housing sector is showing “signs of recovery”.
But it acknowledged that global issues around the supply of materials and skilled labour, and the associated rises in cost, are still “affecting the pace at which houses are delivered”.
A spokesperson for the Scottish government added: “We continue to work closely with our partners to ensure projects can be progressed as quickly as possible and work with local authorities to deliver priorities identified in their local housing strategies, across all tenures.”
More up-to-date figures published as part of the UK House Price Index indicate that in the social sector, new housebuilding figures to the end of June 2022 show an increase of 23% to 6,254 new build completions.
This is up from 5,084 new build completions in the previous year.
Starts, however, fell by 4% (163 homes) to 4,437, down from 4,600 new build starts in the previous year, according to the UK House Price Index.
As for Scotland’s Affordable Housing Supply Programme, the total number of affordable homes completed in the 12 months to the end of June 2022 was 9,334, an increase of 17% on the previous year.
The government spokesperson added: “We are proud to have now delivered 112,993 affordable homes since 2007.
“We are committed to delivering on our target of 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70% of these available for social rent, making full use of the £3.6bn five-year funding already secured to support the delivery of social and affordable housing across Scotland.”
