Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish National Investment Bank is an absolutely critical partner. It is independent from Government and it is a critical partner in housing investment, not least in bridging the £800 million gap. We work closely with the investment bank. I would summarise the current position as follows. There has been great work to date—I can speak to some examples of that—where the investment bank has made an investment, made a substantial return and delivered homes in communities.

The more important thing is that there is real opportunity for that to increase. I have been speaking with representatives of SNIB, which has been doing a significant amount of market testing on the appetite for growth in housing. It is fair to say that there is a lot of it out there—provided that the right conditions can be created for investment.

By way of example, SNIB invested £60 million into the Thriving Investments mid-market rent fund to deliver affordable, high-quality rental homes across Scotland in mid-market rent. The fund has a mandate to build 1,500 high-quality homes close to major city centres, and it has already delivered 742 mid-market rent homes, with another 449 in development. That is a city example. The other example that I have in front of me is a very different proposition. It is in Lerwick, and it is a £730,000 investment that has supported the construction of six high-quality one-bedroom homes for key workers in Shetland. You can see from that not only the work that has already been done but the bank’s ability to invest in ways that support the needs of different communities.

I will mention, out of interest, that we recently took a delegation to London to meet investors there. The Scottish National Investment Bank came with us, and so did representatives of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Highland councils. They made the pitch for the investable proposition that is Scotland’s housing market, and it was well received. We have complemented that with work that the Deputy First Minister has been doing on the InvestScotland portal, which seeks to create one window through which to move in order to invest in Scotland. We are trying to simplify the offer, make the case and create the right conditions for it to work.

I will go to Kirsty Henderson for the details of the flexibility. In recent years, the funding has been directed, for the most part, to those areas with the greatest strain on their homelessness services. To my mind, there is a lot of flexibility in what they are able to do and acquire because it is based on their local market, which they know better than I do.

Kirsty can say more about Ms Tweed’s experience of the condition of acquisitions.

I will close that part of our discussion by saying that the work on turning round the number of voids—which has not been exhaustive but has significantly eaten into them, to the extent that there is not a huge amount of scope left for the turning round of voids—plus the work to acquire homes now is supported by our work to bring long-term empty private homes back into use and by our investment in the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership. We had a record year in 2024-25, with 2,066 privately owned homes being returned to active use, which was a 10 per cent increase on the year before. I present those three things together to show the interventionist approach that we are trying to take.

I will take the last part of that question first and will then say a little bit about FTs. I might also bring in Sean Neill to give a little more colour to the answer on FTs.

I am very seized of the need to support, among others, first-time buyers, and there are two things that the budget confirms in that space. One is the continuation of the open-market shared equity scheme. One of the actions in my housing emergency action plan was to re-expand eligibility for that scheme, which we call OMSE. I have figures here to show that it has already helped to deliver some results for first-time buyers: 365 applications were approved between 2 September and the end of December last year, with 68 purchases completed, 19 of which were by households that included children. That vindicates the wider eligibility for that scheme. We will also maintain the first-time buyer relief within land and buildings transaction tax.

I know that stakeholders have called for more bespoke support packages for first-time buyers and I understand that need, but it must be balanced with other needs in the housing portfolio.

A number of opportunities are open to us with FTs, and we will always challenge ourselves to find the best ways of investing those. Sean can say a little about that.

I do not actually have the budget document in front of me, but I am told that they are the same figures. What I have here is that the autumn budget revision figure was £320.6 million and the total for this year is £325.6 million, so that is a cash-terms increase of £5 million. In the current financial climate, with public money being in short supply, maintaining my budget at that level was a success in many ways, because it allows me to continue to run all the heat in buildings schemes, particularly my area-based schemes, the warmer homes schemes that are directed at fuel poverty, and the Home Energy Scotland grant and loan. I appreciate that inflationary pressures are hurting budgets, so being able to maintain the position in cash terms has allowed me to keep my schemes running. I will, of course, update the committee in due course about the split of investment between the schemes.

I am just going through my pack of papers to find the figure for the spend—yes, here we are. As of the end of December 2025, £15.9 million had been spent against the programme, which demonstrates the ramping up of activity following the passage of the primary legislation that was required to work around Scotland’s unique tenure systems.

The committee will see that we have invested around £55 million next year and £371 million over the course of the spending review. As we have said before, this is a 15-year programme, and we have talked about estimates of between £1.7 billion and £3.1 billion. Mr MacGregor asked how confident we can be that the spend that has been allocated will be spent. I am confident, because the primary legislation got those barriers out of the way and we are now moving into a period of rapid single building assessment deployment and mitigation measures where they are needed, and cladding remediation where that is identified as being life-safety critical.

My working assumption is that £30 million per annum could be raised via the levy, and that we could expect that to come into play from 2028. However, that may end up not being the case because, as you say, the bill is still going through the Parliament and is by no means in final form.

I might ask Stephen Lea-Ross to say a word or two about the cladding aspects of that. We are straying slightly from our topic, but this is a very important issue. It would be fair to say that mistruths were part of the cladding issue and one of the fundamental problems leading to Grenfell. Perhaps Stephen can say a bit more on that, but the Government is responding to what the Grenfell inquiry found and its recommendations. Another thing that we have done is create a building safety forum within Government, which monitors the building landscape and intel as it arises. RAAC is still used throughout Europe as a building material, because, if it is properly maintained, it does not present an issue. That is very different from the situation with cladding.

Our approach is more about good communication and understanding the intelligence around building materials, as and when it arises, and making sure that we are taking commensurate action. Stephen, do you want to say something on cladding?

As a point of principle, I am very supportive of community-led housing. Earlier, I mentioned the fact that local authorities know their market better than I do. As someone who comes from an area that does not have a large centre of population but that is made up of lots of different communities, I know that the closer you get to the need in a community, the more it is understood. Identifying the need and making the case for it to be met is probably one of the most useful elements of community-led housing.

When it comes to practical delivery, it is clear that support is needed. That is where my absolute support for community-led housing is slightly caveated, because I do not want to burden community groups with what councils, the Scottish Government and RSLs ought to be doing, which is providing the housing.

I think that there is a sweet spot to be found, which will enable us to combine local knowledge and support for development, where a community group has the capacity to do that. Equally, we should always be clear that it should not fall to communities to lead the work from start to finish.

The rural and islands housing fund is there to support such projects, which we will assess as they come forward. I will continue to work with community organisations, principally on identifying need, because I suspect that there is a bit of a gap there.

Yes, that is right. It is about taking the first big step, but a housing project is full of big steps, from start to finish, as anyone who has ever been involved with one will know. The funds are in place to supplement the core programme, and, as a matter of principle, I am very supportive of community-led work.