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We will reach out and see whether there is any specific work that we can do with the council on that.

What is really important is that it is not up to the Government to say that the housing emergency is over. We have to make sure that stakeholders and local authorities agree with that. We have to look at the key performance indicators in terms of what is required to make sure that we come out of the emergency. As I said, we want to come out of it as quickly as we possibly can, but we have to make sure that the progress that we are making is sustainable.

We are also looking at medium and long-term proposals to make sure that we do not go back into a housing emergency. That work is on-going and we are engaging on that with stakeholders as we speak. There will be more work on that in the meeting in March.

Thank you, convener. I appreciate the opportunity to update the committee on our wide-ranging work in response to the housing emergency.

I acknowledge that 2024 was a challenging year for housing delivery. However, by declaring and addressing the housing emergency, we have acted decisively to support individuals and families across Scotland, who remain at the heart of our action. Our vision is clear: it is for everyone to have a safe, good-quality and affordable home that meets their needs in the place that they want to be. The proposed increase in funding for the affordable housing supply programme in the next financial year further strengthens our commitment to delivery.

The housing emergency requires a responsive and bold approach to ensure the best outcomes. There is no one definition of the emergency, as the pressures in the system are complex and have different impacts in different parts of Scotland. As I outlined in my letter to the committee last month, we have prioritised a regional approach to deliver the impact that we wish to make by working most urgently with the five local authorities that are experiencing the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures.

Ministers and officials are engaging intensively with those local authorities to advance a range of activity, including the targeted use of £40 million to acquire additional homes and bring social voids into use. For example, in Fife, 25 properties were recently acquired and will soon be available for people to move into, while a further 12 acquisitions are approved and in progress. In 2025, we plan to make record funding of £15 billion available to councils for services, including homelessness services, alongside £97 million for discretionary housing payments and £4 million to support local authorities and front-line homelessness prevention services.

We have taken an activist approach to working with stakeholders on our emergency response and refocused our external housing to 2040 governance board to drive action on the housing emergency. We strengthened the board last week by welcoming new members from Shelter, Crisis, Homeless Network Scotland and the Wheatley Group, thereby fostering collaboration to deliver practical solutions to address the housing emergency. Their input on impactful funding, potential risks and new ideas was incredibly valuable as we planned our next steps together.

Among the promising early initiatives that the board is considering are further efforts to bring privately owned empty homes back into use. That is supported by the £2 million allocation for empty homes that was announced in the draft budget. We will continue to ask our partners to join us with the urgency and innovation that is needed to accelerate progress.

In rural Scotland, more than 12,400 affordable homes were delivered between April 2016 and March 2024. At the annual summit on the rural and island housing action plan in October, I highlighted successes such as the rural and islands housing fund, which recently supported an award-winning regeneration project. Joint funding with the Nationwide Foundation is helping community organisations to build capacity and deliver affordable homes. Our demand-led key worker fund, which has up to £25 million available until 2028, has already supported projects in Orkney, Highland, Moray and North Ayrshire.

In 2024, we also faced the impact of hugely reduced capital budgets across Government, driven by United Kingdom Government cuts. Despite that, we unlocked further funding throughout the year, including £40 million for acquisitions.

We also invested £22 million as part of our charitable bond programme. That generated a further £7 million in charitable donations, which, in addition to our investment through the affordable housing supply programme, will be used to deliver more homes. In 2023-24, we used more than £71 million of charitable bond donations to supplement our affordable housing supply programme investment, which will support the delivery of more than 600 housing association social rented homes. I am very pleased that the proposed budget for our affordable housing supply programme in 2025-26 will involve an increase of more than £200 million compared to the published budget for 2024-25. Subject to the budget being passed by the Parliament in the coming months, we will focus on ensuring the most impactful use of those funds.

In pursuit of that objective, last week ministers asked the housing to 2040 board to consider proposals that will reduce the number of families with children that are in temporary accommodation. We are also working with local authorities to develop innovative plans to maximise housing delivery. Where the Scottish Government can use its powers to do even more, we are committed to doing so.

I hope that this update has provided a clear overview. We are resolute in our determination to tackle the housing emergency and, together with our partners and communities, we will continue to make progress.

My immediate focus will be on planning the effective allocation of the significant funding that will be forthcoming if the budget is agreed. I look forward to updating you on that in the coming months.

I will go on to talk about progress, but on the areas that you queried, the record level of funding is £15 billion available to councils, £97 million for discretionary housing payments, and £4 million to support local authorities and front-line services. The board members who joined us last week were from Shelter, Crisis, the Wheatley Group and Homeless Network Scotland.

Coming back to progress, I have a number of points. At the start of the meeting, I said that this is a complex area. We have taken a number of actions, focusing on delivery. One of the key actions concerns planning—which you will have heard about from Ivan McKee—and the creation of the housing planning hub. We did that through extensive discussions with Homes for Scotland, for example.

On the back of that, on 15 November, we convened a group of key stakeholders to work on the issue of stalled sites. There will be a meeting on 17 January to talk about the progress that has been made on that. There has been significant focus on how we remove the barriers around stalled sites. You will have seen that several statements were made about houses that were approved but that have not yet been delivered. We are focusing on sites that have just started or that have not started yet through the planning delivery hub, including through speaking to partners such as Homes for Scotland. I will bring in Lauren McNamara to talk more about what work has been carried out on that.

On the affordable housing supply programme, I mentioned the £40 million fund. When we are talking about the housing emergency, we need to look at it in two ways. First, how do we reduce the number of people in temporary accommodation, particularly children? What can we do to bring homes back into use? We have talked about voids, empty homes and acquisitions

We also need to consider the longer-term sustainable actions that need to be taken, and the £40 million is focused on that. There have been significant reductions in some local authorities. For example, the City of Edinburgh Council has made a significant difference in reducing the number of void properties. That is really important.

Another key issue is the removal of delivery barriers. When I met all the housing conveners at a Convention of Scottish Local Authorities meeting about eight or nine months ago, one of the key things that I was told in relation to voids was about energy and utility companies being able to come in to get properties back into use, so we held a round-table meeting with utility companies to try to increase the turnover of social homes.

We have taken a number of actions. Later, I might talk about the focus on the five key local authorities and the specific actions that we have taken, but that is a general overview of what we have done. Our work is focused on how we can get homes turned around as quickly as possible while increasing the supply of affordable housing, because we need to continue to build houses. We have a good record on that.

That is a general overview of the initial actions that we have taken, and I am happy to go into more detail as we get into more questions.

That kind of approach has been mentioned by not only the Communities Housing Trust, but by Shetland Islands Council and Orkney Islands Council. I discussed it with Ronnie MacRae at the time. As you said, convener, he has now moved on from CHT.

The CHT was going to do a little bit more work on that and come back to us. I am happy to pick up on it. Lauren McNamara will come back on any discussions that have been held. Although there have been discussions, the Communities Housing Trust has not progressed the idea because, as you know, construction costs in rural communities can be up to 30 to 40 per cent more than they are in central Scotland. Work has been done and there is a cost pressures group where the Government can talk about that. You will know that construction inflation was really high 18 months ago, and that has not helped. We looked at the benchmarking and the idea is still under discussion. We can come back to the committee with more details.

I am responding to that, in terms of what we need to do, and as part of my observations. There is the impact of Brexit and construction inflation. Anecdotally, construction inflation was around 20 to 25 per cent. Nobody estimated that, and we did not have it at the time that the target was set. The cost of living crisis hit us in that regard, too.

We set a target, but things change and there are external pressures—nobody can deny that that is the case. As I have said, there was construction inflation, and we had to increase our benchmarks. Ultimately, the funding that we have to produce as many homes as possible was impacted on. If construction inflation goes up by 20 to 25 per cent, that has an impact on what we can deliver. We set targets, but there are external matters, too. Obviously, in the review, we are discussing what impact they had.

It is a nuanced approach, but we all have to take into consideration what has happened in the past years with construction inflation and the impact of Brexit. The impact of Brexit has been devastating. One of the key things in the construction trade, for example, was the shortage of labour, which was caused by construction workers having to leave. If you speak to any construction company, they will tell you that that is the case. That had an impact on delivery. It was not just about the cost of construction materials going up; labour costs went up, too, because of the impact of Brexit, which we could not have forecast at the time when the target was set.

There have been external matters, and we need to take those into consideration. What did they do? What can we do going forward? How can we maximise funding? That is why I set up the housing investment task force, which looks at how we get investment into Scotland. I would love to be able to go out and borrow on the markets for housing, but we cannot do that, because we do not have that ability. The housing investment task force was set up to consider what we do to maximise investment into Scotland.

Financial transactions are an important aspect in getting another £400 million, and we are looking at mid-market rent, charitable donations and so on. That is all in the review that is happening now.

There are a couple of ways of thinking about that. A key focus is looking at the issue on a regional basis. That is really important. The focus on the five local authorities—Glasgow City Council, the City of Edinburgh Council, South Lanarkshire Council, Fife Council and West Lothian Council—is based on the evidence that we have. Those local authorities account for roughly 70 to 75 per cent of people, particularly children, in temporary accommodation. It is key that we think about the biggest impact that we can make in a short period.

The focus is on working with those five local authorities. Officials meet them weekly, and sometimes even daily, to talk about specific issues. That is key. Shelter raised the point about having a targeted approach, and it works very closely with local authorities on that basis.

Urgency is shown by working with those five local authorities. That does not discount the other local authorities, but there is clear evidence that those are the five local authorities that we need to focus on to try to bring down the figures.

I come back to my point about the quickest action that we can take to get properties back into use. That can be done through work on voids, acquisitions and empty homes. In Edinburgh, for example, we highlighted the work that was needed to reduce the number of voids. The council has managed to reduce that number by 500 over a short period, and it is looking to get it down to 650. A little more work is still needed, but it is making really good progress.

We are showing urgency by thinking about how we can make the biggest impact in the shortest period of time. That involved working with Shelter on the targeted approach that it wanted us to take.

In Glasgow, for example, the council is doing very well in reducing the number of empty homes. How do we learn lessons from that? It is important that we learn lessons from each local authority. How do we learn how Glasgow has reduced the number of empty homes? It has reduced the number by 50 per cent in a few years. What has it been doing? It has focused a lot of its efforts on compulsory purchases. How do we learn from what has happened with empty homes in Glasgow?

Our work is very much about how we can make the biggest impact most quickly. As I said, I meet Shelter to discuss such actions, and it was represented on the board last week.

Beyond that, we need to continue to build more houses at a quicker pace through the work on, for example, stalled sites and planning.

That was one of the key things that we discussed with stakeholders last week. You will be aware that, when the housing emergency was declared, there was a range of asks from a coalition of stakeholders that came forward. The issue was discussed last week and it will be discussed at another board meeting in—I think—March. There will be further discussion on that.

There is also how local authorities and other stakeholders see that question, and what our key performance indicators are. Work is on-going. We obviously want to get out of the housing emergency as soon as we possibly can, and discussions are on-going about what KPIs we need to have to make sure that we are moving out of the housing emergency.

Each local authority will have empty homes, some of which will be voids, and they are part of the empty homes figures.

I know Duncan Maclennan very well. It depends on the area. When I came into this role, one of the key issues for me was how we maximise economic development opportunities. The housing investment task force was one of the ways to address that, as it looks at how we get additional funding for such development. We need to be aware of the need to look at the economic development aspect. For example, the freeport presents huge opportunities in delivering housing and jobs. We have already seen a huge amount of investment coming into Scotland, so how do we maximise that? It has always been there.

If we are looking for economic development opportunities, housing needs to be part of the solution. It is very much about the work that Highland Council is doing on how it delivers temporary housing. Another example is the work that Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is doing on building 1,000 new homes for construction workers, but they will have a legacy beyond that. Economic development is part of the answer. Infrastructure funding is also part of it, and we are also looking at finance. We encourage local authorities to look at maximising housing. Of course it is about providing homes, but it is also about economic development opportunities.

It comes back to the convener’s point about what we need to do and whether we need construction hubs in different parts of Scotland. How do we maximise the opportunities? Good housing and economic investment will bring people into an area.

That is the work that we have focused on. I am looking at how the Government gets investment into different parts of Scotland. Housing plays a major part in that, as the Deputy First Minister has said. We always try to encourage that.

Ms Roddick made a wider point about the sustainability of rural communities. We cannot lose sight of that, and I am very conscious of the part that housing plays in broader economic development and tackling poverty. What housing does to tackle poverty is important, and I always encourage local authorities in that regard. Could we do better across Scotland? Of course we could. There is always room for improvement. We are doing relatively well at the moment, but we need to do more to maximise tackling poverty and other rural issues and to grow the population and the economic development opportunities that create work for local companies, as the convener talked about.