14 Mar 2024
Scotland’s Housing Festival 2024: A time for action
This year's Scotland’s Housing Festival was held at Glasgow’s SEC Centre, where around 500 delegates witnessed CIH Scotland national director Callum Chomczuk declare a housing emergency.
As the winds sweep across the rugged landscapes and historic cities of Scotland, a pressing issue silently echoes through its communities: the state of housing.
From a growing homelessness crisis that now sees around 10,000 children sleeping in temporary accommodation every single night, to a supply-demand imbalance pricing many out of the market, headwinds continue to buffet the sector from all directions. The latest blow came directly from the hands of the Scottish government, which confirmed a devastating £196m cut to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme.
This grim picture formed the backdrop to Scotland’s Housing Festival 2024, where, in light of the increasingly dire state of the country’s housing landscape, Callum Chomczuk declared a housing emergency.
“Tenants, customers, and everyone who doesn’t have a home is going to face a challenging few years,” said CIH Scotland’s national director as he opened the two-day conference in Glasgow, which declared its own housing emergency just last year.
“Scotland is in the midst of a housing emergency, and we need a political response,” he added, prompting unfettered applause from the packed auditorium.
CIH Scotland’s declaration of a housing emergency follows similar moves by three local authorities – Argyll and Bute, Edinburgh, and Glasgow – in 2023, citing among other issues the rise in children in temporary homeless accommodation and the chronic shortage of social homes.
All such declarations have been made following Shelter Scotland’s campaign to get local authorities in Scotland, as well as the Scottish government, to declare a housing emergency. The homelessness charity launched the campaign in 2022, declaring: “We’ve had enough.” The situation has only grown worse since.
Shelter Scotland chair and former Scottish Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale spoke shortly after Chomczuk’s announcement, declaring once more that “we are out of patience”. She said more local authorities need to declare their own housing emergency, “just like the CIH did this morning.”
Speaking at a general election hustings on day two of the conference, Scottish housing minister Paul McLennan said: “The housing emergency itself doesn’t bring more money from the government.”
He refused to be drawn on whether the Scottish government will join the likes of Edinburgh and Glasgow and itself declare a housing emergency; though, his comments during the conference suggested this isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
Journalist and broadcaster Penny Taylor chaired many of the festival's sessions, including a General Election Hustings featuring housing minister Paul McLennan
Speaking at the same session, councillor Soryia Siddique (deputy leader of the Glasgow Labour Group and spokesperson for Glasgow Labour Housing) said it was “unacceptable” that the government hadn’t yet declared a housing emergency, adding that declaring such an emergency was “crucial”.
Speaking alongside representatives from Scottish Greens, Scottish Liberal Democrats, and Scottish Conservatives, McLennan said “we’ve heard nothing so far from other parties,” adding: “It’s fine to criticise, but where do you find the money?”
The economy
The reasons for the housing emergency are myriad and complex. Yet, one factor that must be considered is the economy.
To build a better picture of the state of the economy and its impact on housing, the conference welcomed Laurie McFarlane, co-director of Future Economy Scotland; and Susan Murray, director of The David Hume Institute.
“We’ve already had one lost decade, and we’re halfway to having another one,” warned McFarlane, explaining that the past 16 years have been a “disaster” in terms of average and real earnings in Scotland.
“Of particular concern,” he said, is the fall in social housebuilding, which he said had been compounded by the recent Scottish Budget.
In terms of the bigger picture, McFarlane pointed out that Scotland’s GDP declined by 0.6 per cent in the final quarter of 2023; however, unlike the UK, Scotland is technically not in a recession due to experiencing growth in the previous quarter.
Sticking to the bigger picture, Murray commented on some of findings from the Institute’s Understanding Scotland Economy Tracker (USET), a quarterly survey that tracks spending intentions and public attitudes on the economy.
Out of 2,300 respondents surveyed in February this year, 58 per cent said they believe Scotland “is going in the wrong direction”. In terms of the country’s economic priorities, respondents most commonly said that the cost of living crisis and inflation (62%) would be at the top of their list.
“The route out of this is to deliver that investment-led just transition to net zero,” added McFarlane.
Homelessness
Given the housing emergency, homelessness was an unavoidable and important topic of discussion. A session on day two, featuring the chief executive of the Scottish Housing Regulator, Michael Cameron, explored the effectiveness of Rapid Rehousing – defined simply as a quickly delivered, settled, mainstream, and sustainable housing outcome for those in need of a home.
All local authorities in Scotland were required to submit a Rapid Rehousing Transition Plan (RRTP) to the government by the end of 2018. With five years now passed since their introduction, the session sought to establish what they have achieved and what comes next for homelessness services.
Cameron was blunt in his initial assessment, telling delegates that the demands of the homelessness system currently exceed the capacity to respond effectively.
“More and more councils are faced with a real dilemma...between placing somebody in unsuitable accommodation or not placing them in accommodation at all,” he said.
Former MSP Kezia Dugdale spoke on behalf of homelessness charity Shelter Scotland, calling on more local authorities to declare a housing emergency
To make matters worse, he said that, over the next five years, local authorities plan on reducing their homelessness services by half due to ongoing budget pressures.
However, Cameron said that, despite the increasing pressures facing local authorities, it was the Regulator’s view that some councils “are not at or approaching the limits of their capacity to do more”.
He said the Regulator would continue to engage with councils to promote improvement “where that’s possible”.
Speaking at a separate session on the housing emergency, John Mills, head of housing services at Fife Council, pointed out – as many others did over the course of the conference – the record levels of child homelessness in Scotland.
He said it is something “we should be ashamed of”.
Professionalism
While the Scottish housing sector isn’t subject to the same professionalism requirements as England, conference attendees were well aware of the need for all housing professionals deliver the best service possible to tenants and customers.
Opening day two of the conference, CIH CEO Gavin Smart spoke of the importance of professionalism and the perennial need to learn and improve.
“It’s more important than ever that those of us in the sector redouble our efforts to provide the quality housing that we aspire to,” he said, adding: “I’m a proud housing professional, and I know that that sentiment will be echoed across this room and Scotland.”
However, echoing Chomczuk’s declaration just a day earlier, Smart pointed out that all UK governments need to do their part to enable an overall and sustained improvement of the housing landscape.
“We are not blind to the many challenges our sector is facing,” he said.
Professionalism is a topic close to the heart of our president, Jill Murray BA FCIH, who also spoke at the conference, captivating delegates with her tale of struggle and success.
Murray spoke of the benefits of mentorship; the importance of leadership, lifelong learning, and delivering excellence; and “the confidence that comes from competence”.
She said it was especially important to be professional as the housing sector has become a de facto “fourth emergency service”, providing crucial support in many different ways to a growing number of people and households.
She ended with a plea: “I ask of you…make ‘Be EPIC’ your pole star. When you do, the results for your tenants and residents will be much better.”
- Find out more about Jill Murray’s Be EPIC presidential campaign
- Get involved with Jill Murray’s chosen presidential charity, Action for Children
A need for change
This year’s Scotland’s Housing Festival sought to bring the sector’s growing challenges to the fore, including rising homelessness, the urgent need for new affordable and social homes, and an increasingly unaffordable private-rental sector. All these issues are entwined within one another and worsened by a lack of government funding – which looks set to continue given the recent Budget.
But with the likes of CIH shouting loudly from the hilltops, the emergency that housing finds itself in is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, and politicians of all stripes and seniority must surely take notice.
A wind of change may blow yet.
Main image: CIH Scotland national director Callum Chomczuk being interview at Scotland's Housing Festival 2024
Unlocked: Why choose this moment to declare a housing emergency?
CC: Because the Scottish government cut £196m from the affordable supply budget. That’s been compounded by the homelessness figures. Three of Scotland’s local authorities have done so and about a dozen or so are at the brink. In this incredibly challenging, difficult context, we need an emergency route response – and that means a political response.
So, we want the Scottish government to declare a housing emergency, but much more importantly, we want them to deliver an action plan and funding to address the emergency in a short, sharp time limit. It needs to be focussed, it needs to be time-limited, but it needs to be impactful.
Unlocked: What impact are you anticipating as a result of this declaration?
CC: It’s up in the air right now. I don’t think we can say. We speak to politicians, we speak to all parties, we speak to the sector about this. We want to see that political response. We also want to see what comes out of the UK Budget today [6 March]. I think that will be incredibly deterministic. But even if that’s not positive, we still need to see a political response. Scotland’s children, Scotland’s homeless, can’t wait.
Unlocked: How disappointing was the recent Scottish Budget for housing?
CC: It was incredibly disappointing, taking nearly £200m in cash terms out of the budget. At the time, the budget was not sufficient to meet our housing need. We were asking for hundreds of millions more just to keep pace with inflation...we know cost of living crisis has had a huge impact on inflationary housebuilding costs. But we set an ambition. We set a 10-year ambition for delivering the social and affordable homes Scotland needs. They can’t give up at the first hurdle. We’ve got to keep investing.
So, we’re incredibly disappointed. But it’s never too late. We can always change our mind. We can always find the money to invest. But it’s about priorities, and our priority is social housing.
Liam Turner is the CIH's digital editor.
