The Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement Consultation Response

Shelter Scotland welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement and the Government’s general focus on land reform.

As the statement clearly emphasises, central to the Scottish Government’s commitment to land reform should be a desire to reduce inequality and poverty and to increase the wellbeing of everyone in Scotland. As Shelter Scotland has been arguing ever since its creation almost 50 years ago, housing plays a key role in the wellbeing of the Scottish population.

In 2015, there were 1.48 million owner-occupier households, 570,000 households in the social sector (including 320,000 households living in local authority accommodation) and 350,000 households living in the private rented sector across Scotland, 91,000 of which contained children.

Across the UK, the housing stock is now 3.65 times worth Britain’s GDP as UK homes are worth a record £6.8 trillion. In 2014, it was estimated that Scottish homes were worth £325 billion. Not only does Scotland’s housing have an immense impact on our economy, as the financial crisis clearly demonstrated, it also impacts the Scottish population’s health and wellbeing.

In March 2016, 142,500 households were on local authority waiting lists. In 2015/16, 34,661 homelessness applications were submitted leading to 28,226 households being assessed as homeless. 10,570 households, including over 5,700 children, across Scotland were living in temporary accommodation between July and September 2016. Scotland’s housing system is under a constant strain, which affects a significant part of the Scottish population – from people, who are homeless or at the risk of homelessness, to others, who experience bad housing that, for example, is overcrowded or damp. The Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement and land reform in general need to properly acknowledge the vital impact housing has on our wellbeing as individuals and as a society.

In its response to the Consultation on the Future of Land Reform in Scotland in February 2015, Shelter Scotland supported the creation of a Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement. While Shelter Scotland continues to support the principle of a Statement, we believe that the Statement should go further in acknowledging the importance of housing, especially the need for good quality affordable housing. Moreover, due to the non-legal basis of the Statement, further regulations should be put in place that safeguard some of the rights and responsibilities incorporated into the Statement and that provide further clarification regarding the standards that are to be upheld