Kenneth Gibb: Announcing the new housing land agency - More Homes Scotland

Last Thursday, the Scottish Government announced their intention to act on the recommendation made by the Housing Investment Taskforce to create and run a new national agency for housing and land delivery – called More Homes Scotland. We can expect a statement to Parliament in March about initial progress, and there is a timeline to make the agency fully operational by 2028-29, all subject to the election outcome in May.

The cabinet secretary, Màiri McAllan, has said that she welcomes inputs and ideas into the design of the new agency. The first minister said that co-design would include both local government and the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB).

This is good news, which many have been calling for (even though they may not have been calling for the same thing, precisely). We did so in our recent evidence manifesto and had made similar claims in our earlier work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on re-booting the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP).

The timing is also remarkable in that we were already undertaking a focused research project for Shelter Scotland precisely on this issue: what kind of agency, how would it work and how can it be efficiently introduced? We are gathering international and historical evidence (Scottish Homes and Communities Scotland; Homes England and forerunners like English Partnerships; the Land Development Agency in Ireland, other examples in Europe, as well as recent similar developments in Canada).

We will also interview experts across the sector and pull together a rich sense of what might be achieved. Our plan is to publish an interim research briefing on our work for Shelter by the end of February or thereabouts. We have had to pivot the project in the light of the announcement, but we are pleased that the Scottish Government appears to want to engage with us and Shelter on this important and potentially transformative initiative.

The project will now focus on the design of such an agency and how it can be most efficiently made fully operational, drawing on what we know about the agency now and as it evolves in the period up to the election. What do we know so far?

The agency will focus on simplicity, scale and speed. Its land role will include acquiring, preparing and releasing land for development and land assembly. There are four pillars to the agency: 

• Large-scale affordable housing projects
• Rural and island housing
• Enabling infrastructure work to unlock stalled sites
• Closer working with SNIB to make best use of private finance.

In the launch statement, the First Minister, John Swinney, also noted that their recently announced affordable housing public investment plans and the greater confidence of the investment community to invest in housing. He argued that tackling the housing emergency requires also ‘public sector delivery model that can rise to our enhanced ambitions’.

He went on to say that: “A new national agency will mean less duplication, greater expertise, increased efficiencies, and making our substantial investment go further. It will also provide enhanced support to our local authority partners and we will work in partnership with the Scottish National Investment Bank to attract more commercial investment.”

The First Minister continued: “It is a new body that will offer simplicity, scale and speed – boosting delivery, and maximising savings, as part of our commitment to a decade of public sector modernisation and reform.”

There is evidently a lot to think about as we proceed with the research which we hope can provide useful and actionable insights for the design and implementation processes ahead for the Scottish Government. In taking the work forward, we will organise our reading and discussions around the following questions:

• What will success look like for the new agency?
• How will the agency be designed to maximise added value and avoid duplication relative to the ex ante status quo?
• What principles should underpin the purpose, role and activities of the new agency? Will it acquire specific powers of intervention, a new budget, and, for instance, the capacity to use revolving funds to recycle land capital receipts to invest in more housing land?
• How will it function across Scotland, and where will it sit on the spectrum from a centralised, national body to distributed, regional or localised functions, bearing in mind the commitment to work with local government and the need to align with functional often regional economic geographies?
• How in practice should agency design be turned into fully operational implementation, and done so as quickly as possible (but not too quickly)? The agency will require new legislation – what is the timetable for this process likely to be? 
• Should the agency include a research and monitoring function?

This is an important decision and one with considerable sector momentum. But the details are critical. We welcome the opportunity this affords and hope that the research can contribute to delivering an effective housing and land agency.