Shelter Scotland, housing and homelessness charity, today (Friday) welcomed the Scottish Government’s announcement of a budget for affordable housing in Scotland but said much more was needed to tackle the consequences of the 'credit crunch'.

Gavin Corbett, Head of Policy, said: 'Today's announcement about how the budget cake from last year is to be sliced up is fine as far as it goes, but the real question lies in how big the cake is in the first place.

'Since the budget announcement last November, there have been signs of a potential downturn in the private housing market. This makes an even more compelling case for public sector investment to take up the slack.'

He added: 'Claims of an increased investment of 19 per cent are misleading. The increase in investment over the 2004 spending review period is much lower, at 9 per cent, after allowing for inflation. And we remain disappointed that the Government has still not outlined in detail how many affordable rented homes it intends to build over the coming years. We continue to push for 30,000 affordable rented homes by 2011 as a minimum.'

Notes to Editors

1. The overall affordable housing budget was published in November 2007 in the budget. Today, a detailed breakdown was expected; however, at the time of writing the Scottish Government has not yet published this breakdown. Shelter will continue to press for this to be published today.
2. The Scottish Government has still not said how many affordable homes it will build; simply repeating the 21,500 target set in 2004.
3. At its ‘Housing Bubble’ event on May 22, Shelter heard from speakers warning that Scotland would not be insulated from a housing market downturn, following the credit crunch and that there was now a much stronger case for direct public investment to sustain production in the building industry.
4. For more information, visit scotland.shelter.org.uk