The Scottish Government has announced More Homes Scotland – a new national executive agency to speed up and maximise affordable housing delivery across Scotland.
Key details:
- Focus: in three parts – simplicity (reducing duplication and inefficiencies), scale (delivering large projects, including rural and island needs), and speed (unlocking stalled sites, land, infrastructure and collaboration with the Scottish National Investment Bank to leverage private finance).
- Timeline: co-design phase commencing now; starts operating 2027-28; fully functional in 2028-29 (subject to the May 2026 election outcome).
- Resources: backed by record funding of up to £4.9 billon over four years to deliver 36,000 affordable homes.
This is a welcome move that shows the Scottish Government means business on tackling a housing emergency decades in the making – by embedding safe and settled homes as a national infrastructure goal, as well as a fundamental right for everyone.
That focus is needed. Stagnation in housebuilding has driven rising homelessness, and a dedicated executive agency offers real potential to break through long-standing blockages in planning, finance, land and skills. By maximising public investment, it can build sector confidence, attract additional private funding, and help deliver at the scale we urgently need.
The commitment to investment in housing in last week’s budget, while record-breaking, falls short of independent research showing we need at least 15,693 affordable homes delivered every year to meaningfully address homelessness and reduce the backlog affecting tens of thousands of households. More Homes Scotland can provide the strategic and delivery mechanism to get us closer to closing that gap, and its ability to do so will be a key measure of success.
In shaping this new agency, two key lessons stand out: the need for a relentless focus on measurable outcomes to ensure real, sustained impact beyond initial outputs; and ensuring root causes of housing inequality – such as poverty and systemic inequalities – underpin the co-design phase, strategic decisions and resource allocation from the outset. By embedding these lessons, we can help create a people-first agency that drives the structural change needed to chart our way out of the housing emergency.
At Homeless Network Scotland, we’re ready to harness the insights of the third sector and people who’ve been through homelessness to help make that happen.