Affordable housing target remains ‘important’ despite funding cut – Robison
The Deputy First Minister said the Government will look to finance from the private sector to supplement house-building.
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Your support makes all the difference.The Scottish Government’s affordable housing target remains “important”, the Deputy First Minister has said, despite a more than £200 million cut to the housing budget.
Shona Robison – who also serves as the country’s Finance Secretary – announced her first Budget in the role on Tuesday.
The document – which was published against the backdrop of a £1.5 billion black hole in the country’s finances – increased taxes, including the creation of a new tax bracket for higher earners.
But the housing budget was slashed from £738.3 million last year to £533.2 million, including a cut of £188.8 million for house-building.
The Scottish Government has a target of building 110,000 new affordable homes by 2032, while three councils have declared a housing emergency.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Wednesday, Ms Robison said the target is still “important”, but there will have to be different methods of funding used to fulfil it.
“A 10% cut to our capital budget over the next five years is having an impact on our capital programmes,” she said.
“What we had to prioritise next year was our legal and contractual commitments, things that were already in train.
“What we’re doing, and the work we’re doing with the housing minister, is to look at how we can lever in innovative finance.
“Work is well advanced on that to make sure that working with private sector organisations we can lever in additional finance, because we recognise that affordable housing is a key anti-poverty measure and we want to be able to deliver on our commitments, but we’ll have to do that in a different way.”
Ms Robison also announced councils will receive £144 million to freeze council tax, but local authority body Cosla said the funding needs to be closer to £300 million.
In its initial reaction to the Budget, Cosla said the funding settlement – which it said totals £13.2 billion – amounts to a cut of £251 million.
Ms Robison, however, said the settlement is fair.
“They are getting an increasing share of the overall budget, something that they have asked for,” she said.
“Of course on capital, yes, capital is difficult, we’ve got a 10% cut to our capital budget over the next five years, so nowhere in the public sector can be immune from the impact of that capital budget reduction that we are having to manage.”
Ms Robison said the settlement – which she claimed totals more than £14 billion for the next year – is “not a bad offer”.
Scottish Labour finance spokesman Michael Marra also spoke to BBC Radio Scotland, saying there had been a “scathing” reaction to the Budget.
He said: “There’s blood on the carpet right across the public sector but also huge concern from business and private individuals.”
When it was put to him that the Labour-run Welsh Government also faces a challenging budget, he said: “Despite Barnett consequentials we have still got an economy fundamentally under-performing the rest of the UK.”
Scottish Conservative finance spokeswoman Liz Smith said: “The Scottish Government has just been unable to deliver the growth that we desperately need.”
She said the Budget had received “one of the most negative responses that I’ve seen for a very long time”.
Reallocating money for the planned national care service will help to avoid cuts elsewhere, she added.