With Scotland now in the third year of a national housing emergency, the audience will hear HFS chief executive Jane Wood underline the urgent need for strong leadership and decisive action, firstly with housing being maintained as a standalone cabinet secretary responsibility.

This follows three consecutive years of decline across all-tenure housing starts and completions, together with serious concern over the country’s rapidly shrinking land supply. HFS has previously warned that the situation risks developing into catastrophic proportions, a claim evidenced by research indicating that completions could fall by as much as 70% to as low as 5,000 per annum by 2031.

With the new parliamentary session now underway and looking ahead to next year’s council elections, Wood will call for leadership from every level of government, as well as from within the home building sector itself, stressing that Scotland’s housing challenges are too large and interconnected for any one side to solve alone - clear direction, meaningful collaboration, timely decision-making and consistent follow-through all being key requisites.

She will also ask those in positions of power not to shirk from the realities that home builders are facing on the ground, saying: “Now is the time to move from political rhetoric and back and forth to action at pace.

“And why? Because, we have a moral imperative to help the children growing up in temporary accommodation, the young professionals struggling to get on the property ladder, the growing families needing larger properties and the key workers who cannot find somewhere to live near their jobs.

“Scotland has the skills. I believe it has the ambition. And, in this room, I know it has the expertise to build a better future.”

Guests will also be asked to heed the words of keynote speaker Sir Chris Hoy by fostering a high-performance culture, maintaining positivity under pressure and showing courage, character, determination and most importantly, leadership in making the case for more homes.

This includes educating new MSPs, dispelling myths around viability and land banking, and speaking with passion about the social, economic and environmental benefits that new homes bring to communities across Scotland.