National Housing Trust failing to deliver: SNP just don’t understand private sector and how it works

The Scottish Government has published a report on Phase 1 of the National Housing Trust, showing that it will deliver fewer than 700 houses, compared to the SNP's promise of 1,200.

Alex Johnstone MSP, Scottish Conservative Housing & Communities Spokesperson, said:

"I warned time and again that the NHT in its current form was little more than a rushed policy concocted on the back of a fag packet.

"When Alex Neil launched it, having slashed the housing budget, he promised that the first round would deliver around 1,200 homes. We now know that it will deliver less than 700. Local councils clearly have little confidence in the scheme, with just seven out of 32 local authorities using NHT to build homes.

"Faced with the poor performance of NHT in its current form, the SNP are back to the drawing board. The reality is that there are thousands of families on waiting lists throughout Scotland who are paying the price for the SNP's inability to understand the private sector and how it works."

1) The report can be found here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/921/0119159.pdf (Key sentence from p.3 - "Phase 1 is expected to deliver almost 700 new affordable homes").

2) Below is an extract from a Herald article on 14th December 2010

More than 20 developers have responded to the Scottish Government's National Housing Trust (NHT) initiative across 12 council areas, enabling the construction target to be more than doubled to 2400 new homes.

The NHT, one of a raft of new funding models developed by the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), was unveiled last March with a target of 1000 affordable homes and the safeguarding of 1000 jobs.

First work on site is now likely to start within six months, with a first round of 1200 homes followed by a second in 2012, creating or safeguarding 1600 jobs in the construction sector, the Scottish Housing Minister Alex Neil told The Herald yesterday.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/business/markets-economy/affordable-homes-target-doubles-after-developers-express-interest-1.1074303

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