Since I retired from working in Housing in 2019, after 42 years in the “business”, I have resisted the temptation to throw in my tuppence worth about the state of housing provision and delivery in Scotland. Some recent stories in Scottish Housing News and locally in the Dundee Courier have, in the words of Peter Finch’s character, Howard Beale, in the classic movie Network made me “mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”.

Councillor Maureen Chalmers, the COSLA housing spokesperson, says “local government must be trusted to deliver future housing provision.” Sorry, Maureen, but trust is earned, and if you could deliver under the present funding regime, I might agree. Historically, local councils delivered huge quantities of homes for the working classes of Scotland. But building the new energy efficient homes we need now at clearly insufficient levels of subsidy and then passing on the costs of borrowing to your tenants in exorbitant rent increases isn’t the answer. You should be shouting this from the rooftops.

First Minister John Swinney announces a new national housing agency that will “ramp up efficiencies” in delivering housing to deal with the “emergency” we face as a nation. Well, it’s not really “we”, John, who face the emergency, it’s “them”, the poorest in our society, who actually don’t have a home. The families with the real emergency have been dialling 999 for longer than anyone can remember, but it seems to be taking longer and longer for the government to answer their call. The thousands on housing waiting lists across Scotland might suggest you put a question mark after ‘More Homes Scotland’. Oh, and do you remember Communities Scotland? Yes, that was the national agency that the SNP scrapped in 2008.

The Scottish Housing Regulator. The first words under its title on its website are “Regulating to protect the interests of tenants.” Sorry, but when you are a toothless part of the government machine which isn’t allowed to comment on how government policy is impacting the lives of those tenants, you have already failed in your primary objective.

Surveys, conducted and reported on their website, show that the percentage of tenants worried that their rents are unaffordable has increased from 39% in 2021 to 60 % in 2024. My problem with the Regulator isn’t the stories that appear in Scottish Housing News, it’s the lack of stories that might actually go somewhere to even highlight tenants’ concerns. And what about their National Panel of Tenants? Who are you and why aren’t you screaming blue murder about the “emergency” and the huge, inflation busting, rent increases being announced all over Scotland right now?

And finally, I come to Angus Council, a local authority I came to know well during the last 24 years of my working life. On the 11th and 12th February, 2 stories appeared in The Courier online as Angus Council Housing Committee was about to consider imposing a record breaking 8% rent increase in April. The first was a classic bit of “whatabootery” that Old Firm fans would be proud of.

SNP Councillor Beth Whiteside, not a member of the council administration, said that Angus Council tenants were getting a better deal than Dundee tenants because their 8% rent increase would only put rents up an average of £5.45 per week while in Dundee, an SNP-run council, 8% equated to more than £7 per week. Is this the level of debate we have descended to?

Just as interesting, however, was a report to the same Angus Council Housing Committee about a development of 19 houses at a former Monifieth Primary School. 16 flats in the conversion of the school buildings and 3 new build homes for “affordable rent”. Cost - £8 million. No, the Committee wasn’t being asked to scrap the project due to the cost of over £420,000 per unit. It was only being informed of a possible delay to the start on site.

I’m sure anyone working for a housing association can confirm that the Scottish Government would never approve these development costs and that no private funder would lend on a development like this. Interestingly, it seems no elected members raised concerns at these costs, especially when historical rent increase information showed that rent increases were able to be held at 1% when they had stopped new provision a few years earlier. 

So, what do I think we can learn from all of this? Clearly, the message from the politicians is disingenuous. A real “emergency” needs an exceptional allocation of the state’s resources to tackle it. This isn’t happening so it’s an emergency in name only. We should always remember that it is a  poor, mainly, disenfranchised minority who are homeless and the victims of the “emergency”.

Bluntly, the numbers of votes aren’t in it. But we should also remember that council and housing association tenants are also among the poorest in our society and funding new provision by lower and lower subsidy levels that increase their rents isn’t the answer either. My view - if developing doesn’t stack up for your existing tenants, don’t do it. Finally, we need to stop councils from wasting much needed resources on vanity projects with exorbitant costs and bring back serious development cost scrutiny for all subsidy recipients. That’s ramping up efficiencies.

I could go on, but most importantly, “Stay mad as hell and don’t stand for it anymore.”