Housing investments including the expected return in terms of additional social housing stock: FOI release

Information requested

Please can you break down all housing investments including the expected return in terms of additional social housing stock and number of people being housed in their social rental properties by year since 2016 and also include the number of properties disposed of or sold.

How many Social Housing do each of the major Housing Associations (including Kingdom, Allia, Clyde Valley, Link, Sanctuary Scotland, Castle Rock, Albyn, Eildon, Cairn, Loreburn, River Clyde, West Lothian, Angus Housing, Winchburgh Developments, Cunninghame) provide in return for the many hundreds of millions being provided in funding and also where can I find information regarding how much of this is given versus how much is loaned and when it is repaid.

Response

A breakdown of all housing investments since 2016 can be found online in the More Homes Affordable Housing Supply Programme Outturn Reports. The outturn figures for 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, and budgetary figures for 2024-2025 can be found in the table below.

	2022-2023 Outturn Figures (£million)	2023-2024 Outturn Figures (£million)	2024-2025 Budget (£million)
Capital Grant	515.493	467.797	414.417
Transfer of the Management of Development Funding (TMDF)	92.245	92.245	92.245
Sub-Total (£million)	607.738	560.042	506.662
Financial Transactions	140.937	147.736	49.200
Total (£million)	748.675	707.778	555.862

An additional £40 million in capital grant for 2024-2025 was announced in April 2024, The figures above do not reflect this increase as it will be formally allocated as part of the Autumn Budget Revision process. Discussions are ongoing with COSLA regarding its allocation.

The out-turn reports show how we have invested Affordable Housing Supply Programme monies across a range of geographies, local authorities and tenures.

The number of social homes delivered since 2016 can be found online through the Housing statistics quarterly update: new housebuilding and affordable housing supply.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below in this letter.

The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for relating to the number of people being housed in social homes, the number of social homes sold and the number of homes disposed because we do not hold information relating to the number of lettings, sales information or disposals.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

A disposal can include demolitions, a home leaving the social rented sector, a transfer to another Registered Social Landlord or a change in tenure. The Scottish Government does not hold this information but we have, however, provided a link to the number of properties demolished which is available online from the Scottish Housing Regulator, under its Statistical information in the table labelled ‘AFS Data All Social Landlords Complete Dataset 2018-19 to 2022-23’. The heading ‘Analysis Units - Units held for demolition at year end – Total’ will provide the information you are looking for. Please note that the information available online only covers the period 2018-2019 to 2022- 2023, and no information prior to this is available.

The Scottish Government also publishes information relating to local authority homes demolished of as part of its Housing statistics: Conversions and demolitions.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

The attached tables provide the breakdown of figures requested relating to the amount of grant received between April 2016 and the end of March 2024 by Registered Social Landlords and local authorities to deliver social homes, and a breakdown of the number of social homes approved, started and completed by Registered Social Landlords and local authorities across the same period. It should be noted that our investment in any one financial year does not correlate directly to the homes completed in that year as projects can take a number of years to complete and we release our grant over a period of time in line with levels of certificated activity.

The Scottish Government funds social rented homes through capital grant. Reasons prompting the repayment of grant are contained within published guidance and the formal offer of grant and could include, for example, a reconciliation of project costs on completion of a project or instances where a property is no longer available for social rent. Social homes can also be funded through capital funds in the form of Charitable Donations. Charitable donations are not repayable unless associated legal conditions are breached.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400422242 - Information Released - Annex

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