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Scottish Government Publishes Draft Vision For Housing To 2040

12th July 2019

Photograph of Scottish Government Publishes Draft Vision For Housing To 2040

The Scottish Government has set out its vision for housing in Scotland leading up to 2040. The draft vision sets out how housing system should look and feel in 2040.

What is Housing to 2040?

Housing has a vital role to play in meeting many of our ambitions for Scotland, including eradicating child poverty and homelessness, ending fuel poverty, tackling the effects of climate change and promoting inclusive growth.

We want everyone in Scotland to have a home that is warm, affordable and accessible and that fits their needs. We also want to ensure we have a housing system that is dynamic and resilient enough to respond to future changes, and can help to address the number of challenges we are facing, including an ageing population and a global climate emergency. That is why we have now begun to consider our longer term aspirations for housing in Scotland and the opportunities for how we might achieve this.

In our 2018-19 Programme for Government, we made a commitment to plan together with stakeholders for how our homes and communities should look and feel in 2040 and the options and choices to get there. This new approach will encompass the whole housing system1 - we want Housing to 2040 to be a lasting legacy that is not just about new homes, but that takes into account the people, place, environment and communities in which our homes, both new and old, are located.

Since making this commitment, we have been engaging extensively with a variety of stakeholders, including local government, businesses, the third sector, home owners, tenants and others to help shape a draft vision and principles for 2040.

This document sets out the Housing to 2040 draft vision and principles that emerged following our initial round of stakeholder engagement.

Comments can be sent to the links in the report.

What are some of the challenges we face?

We have an ageing population and people are living longer

This means that demands on health and social care will increase in the future. We want to think about our different housing options and promote greater adaptability to allow us to live independently at home for longer, reducing that demand.

The number of households is growing and more people are living alone

The number of households in Scotland is projected to increase and one person households are set to become the most common household type. This means we need to think strategically about how we design and build new homes and where, and how we can make the best use of our existing stock.

We need to mitigate the impact of climate change

We must ensure our homes are energy efficient and are able to adapt to the effects of climate change We've set out the actions we’ll take to reduce emissions from our homes in our Climate Change Plan and our Energy Efficient Scotland route map. We have also introduced a Climate Change Bill to strengthen our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

We must act on homelessness

Nobody should be without a safe, warm place they can call home - that is why we are working hard to prevent homelessness in Scotland. We have published our Ending Homelessness and Rough Sleeping action plan to transform temporary accommodation and put an end to rough sleeping and homelessness.

We want to tackle child poverty

The Scottish Government is committed to ending child poverty and the housing system can help us to do this. We want to increase housing affordability and lower running costs to reduce poverty for households with children.

We need to manage the impact of Brexit and the UK Government’s welfare reforms

Brexit will have consequences for both housing supply and demand. The UK Government’s welfare reforms have reduced the support it provides - the Scottish Government works to mitigate this, but this isn’t sustainable in the long term.

The draft vision can be downloaded at https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-2040-report-stakeholder-engagement-2018/