Can Scotland provide adequate housing?

Answer:
Scotland’s housing market could offer people a quality public rental option.  There is a financial model which would allow the Scottish National Investment Bank to finance high quality housing for rent.

Full answer here: How can Scotland provide adequate rented housing?



Freedom is an Attitude: Land, Craft, and Rebellion in The Highlands

Author / Creator: Craig Brice

Media type: Discussion

Date published:

Description of one family's self-build journey in the Highlands, and how it relates to wider society.


What Scotland needs to do to achieve energy efficient homes.

Author / Creator: Chris Morgan

Media type: Policy Paper

Date published:

Energy effciency in housing needs to address...a wider range of issues...to solve a broader range of problems such as fuel poverty and bottlenecks due to under-capacity in the National Grid.


The Homelessness Monitor: Scotland 2021

Author / Creator: Beth Watts

Media type: Assessment report

Date published: 2021

Rates of core homelessness are substantially lower in Scotland (0.57% of households) than in England (0.94%) and Wales (0.66%).  In March 2021, the numbers in temporary housing stood at over 13,000. This is well above the previous peak of 11,665 a year before. 


A new housing settlement

Author / Creator: Common Weal

Media type: Policy Paper

Date published: 2020

There is so much wrong with our housing system, from needless homelessness to spiralling costs (which have shut a generation out of housing) to over-mortgaged homeowners struggling financially to the sheer environmental inefficiency of much of the housing we build to the failure to build homes how and where communities need rather than where a developer can make most money.


Housing 2040 Consultation Response

Author / Creator: Malcolm Fraser

Media type: consultation response

Date published:

A good home and community as a human right, is a font of wellbeing. It is not simply an outcome of wealth-creation. To deliver this covers a wide range of policy areas including:

  • Existing buildings, 
  • land and planning, 
  • regeneration, 
  • finance, 
  • leadership, 
  • diversification, 
  • technology and materials, and 
  • tax and wealth.


Scottish Building Regulations: Review of Energy Standards

Author / Creator: Linda Pearson

Media type: consultation response

Date published:

All new buildings in Scotland should be constructed to passive and zero-carbon standards. All buildings should be surveyed immediately and assessed on their maximum feasible retrofitting potential. They should then be scheduled to be retrofitted to that potential in a single project.

 


The Future of Low Carbon Heat For Off-Gas Buildings

Author / Creator: Common Weal

Media type: Policy Paper

Date published:

The primary barrier to the roll-out of low carbon heat is financial. Efficient schemes will have to be government financed. Biofuels may play a significant role in rural heating where they can seamlessly replace off-grid heating without the need to install new infrastructure.

 


Energy Efficient Scotland Consultation

Author / Creator: Common Weal

Media type: consultation response

Date published: June 2019

Energy Performance Certificates are inadequate due to the severe shortfalls in the methodology. Mandatory improvements should be made when there are changes. Collective energy efficiency improvements such as installing heat networks or the economies of scale can only be done by collective action at government level.


Housing For A Better Nation

Author / Creator: Sarah Glynn

Media type: Policy Paper

Date published: August 2014

Good housing needs more than good housing policy. Housing policy needs to be part of wider social changes towards a more equal, community-centred, environmentally sustainable society. 

 


Housekeeping Scotland: Discussion paper outlining a new agenda for housing

Author / Creator: Malcolm Fraser

Media type: Policy Paper

Date published: October 2016

The United Kingdom’s housing policies have been ideologically-driven, and have led to the current crisis of strangled investment, under-provision and a general flow of power and money from civic society to the wealthy. UK housing has suffered greatly from its politicians’ fixation with a single form of home and tenure, the mortgage-backed and privately-owned home.