Scotland’s public finance minister, Ivan McKee, has announced that a specialist planning hub will be created in a bid to address the country’s housing crisis.
The hub is intended to increase the rate of delivery of homes which have already been granted planning permission, with McKee saying that it will help the planning system play a “full part” in tackling the housing emergency.
The hub, which is set to be in place in early 2025, will be staffed and funded by the Scottish Government.
The public finance minister also announced that the number of bursaries available to post-graduates looking to study planning will be trebled, while a “fuller package of training” for councillors who make planning decisions is being developed.
In a statement to Holyrood, McKee said: “across Scotland, we estimate that more than 164,000 homes have planning permission, but have not yet been built”, adding: “In the Glasgow and Edinburgh city regions alone, planning permission has been granted for 121,000 homes that have not yet been built. – of these, around 38,000 units have been started, but are not yet complete.”
However, the public finance minister also insisted that “planning is not the only, or even the most significant, reason for the challenges we are facing in housing”.
McKee said that action was needed to turn those permissions into homes, adding that the Scottish Government would make progressing stalled planning applications an “absolute priority”.
McKee’s plans came under fire from the Conservative housing spokesperson, Meghan Gallacher, after he said that plans were being formed that would allow councils to increase planning fees to enable them to recoup more of the costs.
Gallacher raised concerns that this could deter developers, saying: “I was hoping for some ground-breaking planning legislation to build more homes, a plan to fix the challenges we are facing right across our housing sector.”
