No Room For Legal Barriers As Demand Builds For Homes

• Published date: 20 March 2023
• Law Firm: Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP
• Author: Mr Fraser Mitchell

With Scotland and the rest of the UK continually missing housebuilding targets, Fraser Mitchell, Partner in our Property and Infrastructure team, asks: what are the roadblocks to building?

Figures from Homes for Scotland indicate that there is currently a shortage of almost 100,000 homes in Scotland. According to their most recent figures, 25,000 new homes are needed each year to keep pace with need and demand - and that figure was last met in 2007. Let those figures sink in. That could mean 100,000 families priced out of the housing market because demand is outstripping supply or 100,000 older couples unable to downsize (and free up larger family homes) because smaller, more suitable, homes are not available. Of greatest concern is that it could mean 100,000 families living in sub-standard housing, the impacts of which are among the practical consequences of failing to deliver the number of homes to meet the real need and demand.

The question then arises: if this scale of shortage exists, why don't we, as a nation, just build more houses? Building new homes requires a number of elements to be in place - there must be willing developers...