Since the Scottish Government announced a national housing emergency in May 2024, the number of new build starts and completions has continued to fall, with the number of social housing starts now at the lowest level since 1997.
On 22 January 2026, the First Minister announced the Scottish Government’s intention to establish More Homes Scotland, a new national housing agency, to enable the delivery of housing of all types to meet housing need across Scotland.
The process to co-design the functions and operating model of the new agency will be led by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing in partnership with local authorities and the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB), but the indication is that its focus will be on:
- large-scale affordable housing projects;
- rural and island housing;
- acquiring, preparing and releasing land;
- enabling infrastructure work to unlock stalled sites; and
- closer working with SNIB to make best use of private finance
While housebuilders have welcomed the establishment of More Homes Scotland, it is certainly not a quick fix as the agency is not expected to be operational until 2027-28. The intervening time must therefore be used wisely to ensure that the agency hits the ground running.
More Homes Scotland could well be the vehicle which delivers more homes, but it will need a dynamic, ambitious leader, a team dedicated to achieving its aims and support from the public and private sector
Elaine Farquharson-Black
We would suggest that the following should be considered:
1. For More Homes Scotland to actually deliver more homes in Scotland, it must be permitted to operate on an independent commercial basis.
2. As an independent actor in the market, More Homes Scotland should not be dependent on, nor restricted to, supporting other bodies (public or private sector).
3. It should have the power to assemble land for housebuilding by public/private developers. This will involve taking risks as it will have to take on complicated and compromised sites which require more early investment in terms of site preparation and building out before seeing any returns.
4. As administrator of grant funding, the agency could decide that in certain circumstances a proportion of the affordable housing supply budget should be used for paying for the infrastructure required to open sites up to support all tenure delivery rather than (or in addition to, but at a lower grant:debt ratio) supporting the cost to affordable housing providers of land and development costs.
5. With too many local development plans stuck demonstrating how their local housing requirement compares to the Scottish Government Minimum All-Tenure Housing Land Requirement, More Homes Scotland should be responsible for setting a national housing target of all tenures and then ensuring that the target is achieved at local level.
6. As part of that, and building on the existing notification direction, the agency should create a central depositary of all planning applications for housing to give it visibility about delivery across Scotland.
It should then co-ordinate statutory undertakers and guide local authorities on what infrastructure will be needed and the most effective way of achieving delivery within the timescales needed to meet target numbers. It should be given the power to intervene and provide assistance to planning authorities or to call-in applications where they go beyond the statutory determination period.
7. Finally, More Homes Scotland should oversee all regulations which would impact on the delivery of more homes, removing the current silo approach which has seen additional regulations add to construction costs at a time when the housebuilding sector is already struggling.
With clear goals and a free rein, More Homes Scotland could well be the vehicle which delivers more homes in Scotland, but it will need a dynamic and ambitious leader, a team dedicated to achieving its aims and support from the public and private sector. As a nation, we can’t afford for it to fail.
Elaine Farquharson-Black is a partner at Brodies LLP
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