Scotland’s new housing agency will target “private commercial capital and investment” to deliver homes of all tenures, including build-to-rent and social housing.
John Swinney, first minister of Scotland (picture: Alamy)
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Scotland’s new housing agency will target “private commercial capital and investment” to deliver homes of all tenures, including build-to-rent and social housing #UKhousingMore Homes Scotland, a new agency launching next year, will form a strategic partnership with the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB).
The executive agency and the publicly owned bank will work together to bring more private finance into housing, the Scottish government said.
The pair will target “private commercial capital and investment”, according to the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) new Programme for Government, published on Tuesday.
The cash will be used to help entrants to the sector and deliver more homes of all tenure types, including build-to-rent and social housing.
The document did not say whether this cash would come from the £20bn it is targeting in pension funds as set out in the party’s manifesto.
David Melhuish, director of developer organisation Real Estate:Scotland, said the role of More Homes Scotland “will be critical in acting as a catalyst for the delivery of housing of all forms of tenure if it can successfully leverage in private capital to support constrained public finances”.
More Homes Scotland is intended to increase the speed and scale of housebuilding in the country. The agency’s areas of focus include large-scale affordable housing schemes, rural and island housing, land acquisition and release, and infrastructure work to progress stalled sites.
The SNIB is one of two groups that has worked with the government on the design of the new quango after it was announced in January.
Màiri McAllan, who was housing secretary until June this year, told Inside Housing that the government had learned a lot from Homes England, the UK government’s housing and regeneration agency.
In April, Homes England launched a subsidiary called the National Housing Bank, which is backed by £16bn of capital and aims to bring in more than triple this amount in private funding.
More Homes Scotland will be phased in from April next year. Full details of how it will work have not yet been confirmed.
Setting up the quango and establishing its partnership with the SNIB are two of the SNP’s priorities for the next five years.
Another is planning reform, although details of what this would involve were not in the announced programme.
The SNP’s manifesto said the changes would include overhauling compulsory purchase orders, which was confirmed last week.
It also pledged to develop and train new council planners and change rural planning rules.
In its Programme for Government, the SNP recommitted to its target of building 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, including seven in 10 for social rent.
It will roll out a £100m fund to support mortgage deposits for first-time buyers over the next five years despite the first phase attracting criticism from housing groups this summer.
The number of build-to-rent homes under construction in Scotland fell 27% over the past year, according to analysis from property company Savills and Real Estate:Scotland. A total of 1,466 build-to-rent homes were under construction in Scotland in the second quarter of 2026, down from 1,995 during the same period last year. This represents the sharpest percentage fall of any UK nation.