The house building industry can deliver 35,000 zero carbon homes per year by the middle of the next decade according to Billy Kirkwood. However, to do this the industry will have to embrace offsite construction methods and local authorities will have to increase the allocation of land for housing by 50%.

Billy has worked in the construction industry for over two decades and firmly believes that there has never been more pressure to sacrifice energy performance and quality in order to increase the numbers of homes that are built.

He said the main cause of the lack of affordable housing is the phenomenal rise in land prices. Billy is certain that the affordable housing policies are having no effect of land prices and that affordable housing is being ”subsidised” by those people buying new build homes on the open market.

He suggests that this could be rectified if local authorities considered housing need over a 20 to 35 years period and used this to develop better land supply policies.

Gillian Young gave an overview of the CIH research All Pain, No Gain? This covers the experience in Scotland of Affordable Housing Policies since the introduction of PAN 74.

She explained that early research had suggested that the policy would deliver an extra 1,500 affordable homes per year over and above those provided with HAG grant. Unfortunately, she discovered that the policy is only delivering a handful of extra homes each year and that it may be hindering supply by causing delays and encouraging developer to relocate their operations to those local authorities that have not implemented an affordable housing policy.

She said that there is little evidence that similar housing policies in England have delivered additional affordable homes that would not have been built under the old grant system.

The presentations were followed by robust question and answer session where it was suggested that the last time Scotland built 35,000 homes in a year was in the mid 1950’s and that this was almost entirely social housing provided by local authorities. In order to meet the target, it was suggested that there would need to be a step change in way private developers work with local authorities or a massive increase in the funding given to social landlords.