Scottish Federation of Housing Associations Annual Conference 2025: First Minister's speech - 10 June 2025

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.

It's an enormous privilege to be with you this morning and to personally express my thanks and my appreciation as First Minister of Scotland as you mark 50 years as the voice of Scotland's housing associations.

In so doing and I'll say a little bit more about the SFHA, I'm also conscious that very soon Sally will be leaving her post as chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

And as Sally mentioned, not long after I became First Minister last summer, I asked to meet with Sally and a range of other formidable voices in social housing Scotland.

We had that discussion in Bute House and it helped enormously; and in one conversation. Shaping for me, a sense of what were the challenges that had to be addressed. What I had to make as my priorities as First Minister in addressing some of the issues in housing.

And in a sense it was a mark of just how effective Sally and our colleagues were in using the hour that we had together to impart on me, the significance of the issues and the challenges that had to be addressed.

And for me, that's a mark of the enormous contribution that Sally has made to her work at SFHA So, please on my behalf Sally. I express my warmest thanks to you for your service at the SFHA over these last eight years.

The SFHA started life as ‘the Scottish committee’ – a sub-committee of the National Housing Federation. And, in 1975, the SFHA was officially established. Since then Scottish social housing has evolved considerably, and the SFHA has been there every step of the way.

Your members play a vital role in delivering housing and services to some of the most vulnerable members of our society – across rural and urban areas, cities, and our islands.

Representing and supporting members, often through challenging times. Ensuring everyone in Scotland has access to good quality, affordable, safe housing. Because good housing holds the keys to better health, education, and life chances for all.

That means when housing associations succeed, you are not just providing a roof over one head after another. Through this work you are contributing to nothing less than the betterment of our society.

Doing so with diligence, and a passion for wellbeing, which is a huge responsibility, and one that my Government readily supports.

So, I want to thank you for your tireless work and the significant contribution to Scottish social housing that has been made by the SFHA and your members over the last 50 years.

You should be proud of the work that you do. And I want to assure you of the deep engagement of my Government in ensuring you succeed in all the work that you undertake.

That success is ever more important in the conditions that we face today. We find ourselves, in all four nations and across Europe, in a housing emergency, the intensity of which has been growing for some time.

Many Governments are actively working to find solutions. Building costs and processes have increased. Access to labour has become ever more challenging. But the need for warm, secure, affordable homes continues to rise. And is a critical issue that as a society, we must address and we must address successfully

It was post-war Europe and the economic growth of the 1960s that led to much of the housing stock that we still rely on today.

Since that time, there have been many innovations and many economic crises. We’ve seen huge advances in environmentally sustainable building, heating and materials. And how we live, work, and live together as communities has shifted several times.

From hanging washing on a communal back green, to building and demolishing high rise estates, to exploring entirely new planning and ownership models today to meet the needs of rural and urban communities alike.

Having observed and been part of all these housing movements and lifestyle changes, through almost three decades as a parliamentary representative, I recognise the critical importance of delivering sustained progress in tackling the housing emergency that we face as a country.

And I have positioned my Government to do exactly that. Housing faces a myriad of complex challenges and pressures, so I want the Government to be able to deliver greater agility and flexibility in our work with the sector than ever before.

I want the Government to be more activist, more interventionist, and, most importantly, more collaborative in working with the housing sector.

I want us to focus on what we can all achieve together in trying to achieve our shared vision for housing in Scotland. I want Government not to say what we can’t do. I want us to focus together on what we can do today and tomorrow and the next day to achieve our shared vision of ensuring that everyone in Scotland has access to good quality, affordable, safe housing.

Housing therefore has a central role to play in my Government’s agenda which is anchored around four key priorities for Scotland that will enable us to improve people’s lives today:

Eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and ensuring high quality and sustainable public services.

Now, if you think about it, for a moment on those four themes that are guiding and structuring all of the policy interventions of my government, housing is central to each and every one.

We cannot eradicate child poverty if we have children living in poor and substandard housing conditions. So we have to ensure that young children are able to have access to good quality affordable, safe housing.

The economy cannot grow unless we have investment and impetus around the housing agenda, to make sure that communities the length and breadth of the country. Whether it's urban or island, or rural, or city, or town; that we have the investment programme that sustains housing investment.

We cannot achieve our objectives, our necessary, unavoidable objectives, on Net Zero unless we have housing of a particular standard in quality that can help us in that process.

And the delivery of services to support individuals and families in a high quality public service environment is only possible if people have a foundation of a secure home that provides them with their roots and their certainties.

So housing has a key role to play in making an impact in each of those four priorities in the government's agenda.

So I assure you of the centrality of housing in that process.

And making progress in tackling the Housing emergency is therefore critical in this journey.

Since declaring the housing emergency, the Scottish Government has taken an activist approach, focusing our efforts on the five local authorities with the most sustained housing and homelessness pressures.

With the advice and assistance of partners like SFHA, we reinstated the Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget to £768 million – to enable delivery of around 8000 homes.

We responded to the asks from SFHA for a new homelessness prevention fund, and made £1 million available in 2024 to 2025 to registered social landlords and third sector partners, to fund work to help sustain tenancies and prevent homelessness.

We targeted £40 million of funding for voids and acquisitions in 2024-25, which saw almost 1000 homes brought back into affordable use. We are seeing the difference this interventionist approach is taking on voids.  For example, Edinburgh City Council’s management information shows that void levels there have been cut by over 50% since June 2023.

We helped over 2600 households with children into affordable housing last year.

And, only a few weeks into this financial year, we have already approved grants to allow a number of much needed affordable housing projects to proceed. 

So, a great deal has moved faster and better than it did before.

These are some of our immediate actions but we also remain focused on delivering 110,000 affordable homes across Scotland by 2032, with at least 70% for social rent and 10% in our rural and island communities, backed in this year, by £768 million of capital investment.

We also want to create an environment that supports more investment in Housing across all parts of the sector. That is why in my recent Programme for Government we committed to implementing the recommendations of the Housing Investment Taskforce.

They have identified some practical actions that would support that investment growth, allowing us to work in partnership with you and others to deliver the homes that people across Scotland need.

And, as First Minister, I very much value the spirit of partnership and cooperation that exists between the Scottish Government and SFHA, from our joint work to our ‘Housing to 2040’ Board, to the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group.

So my point is that we have an opportunity through focusing on a shared priority and a shared agenda of getting the best out of the input you can make into government policy and thinking, to enable us to achieve as much as possible in our policy agenda.

And one of the issues that I know is of concern to the Housing Association movement, is the importance of multi-year funding to create the conditions for a sustained approach to programme development and planning.

The Scottish Empty Homes Partnership is currently benefitting from being part of a 2 year fairer funding pilot that will see it receive £2 million in 2025-26 and £1.3 million in 2026-27, supporting local authorities to make the best use of existing housing, through driving down numbers of privately owned empty homes.

And I am pleased to confirm today that the Finance Secretary will publish a framework for the next multi-year Scottish Spending Review, as part of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, on 25 June.

This will set out the Scottish Government’s approach, which will look to best align funding with the delivery of our priorities.

And the conclusions of the spending review will include a set of multi-year spending plans to provide stakeholders with a stable platform to support their own business planning.

Now we've not had the opportunity to provide that longer term certainty but I am confident with what we will receive in financial information from the UK Government tomorrow in their spending review, that we will be able to replicate that and provide longer term certainty as a consequence.

Because what I want to make sure and what the Finance Secretary is committed to doing is creating mechanisms to improve the level of certainty on medium term funding for key sectors where that medium term certainty has a beneficial impact on forward planning.

We do all of this because we recognise how important warm, safe and affordable housing will be to achieving the Government’s central vision of eradicating child poverty.

After housing costs, child poverty rates in Scotland are considerably lower than the UK as a whole. This is in no small part due to the increased availability of affordable housing and lower housing costs, which reflect the ongoing work of this sector.

You deliver not only housing, but a range of support and essential services to benefit tenants and communities as well.

And one of the central elements of the approach to public service delivery that I am taking forward as First Minister is the importance of ensuring that our approaches, are person-centred. That we are recognising, how we need to assemble services and interventions to support individuals and families.

And the Housing Association movement is already immersed in so many of these. The aspects of delivering that rounded and comprehensive person-centred support to individuals and families.

And I want to make that more Central to the delivery of policy in the government.

Now One of the examples of that is the £1 million Upstream Homelessness Prevention Fund, bringing together Registered Social Landlords, third sector organisations and community groups, to deliver a cash-first approach to keeping tenants in their homes.

And that's one illustration of the type of practical support that we can put in place to avoid us dealing with wider challenges and issues within society, if we provide that early intervention and support to individuals. We also of course provide additional support to assist in those measures such as the steps that we're taking to mitigate the bedroom tax.

And the wider steps that we are  taking the course of this financial year to address the two child limit, which will help to support the development and strengthening of family incomes as a consequence.

We look of course to the UK Government for action on some of the issues that would make our progress swifter. We look to the Spending Review tomorrow to the UK Government to reverse its freeze of Local Housing Allowance Rates.

Rates need to be raised to cover the bottom 30% of rents in a given area as an absolute minimum, so that we can lift more children out of poverty and prevent homelessness. Because we all want everyone in Scotland to have the choice, dignity and freedom to live in that environment.

We also need to ensure that we support individuals to be able to sustain their tenancies for as long as possible and for their tenancies and their homes to reflect their changing needs in society. So, the work that the government has taken forward, again, at your suggestion to increase the Adaptations Programme budget.

We’ve managed to increase it to £21 million, which is designed to try to help people, to be able to have adaptations undertaken, to sustain their independent living for as long as possible.

And of course that represents a crucial element in the work that the government has taken forward to reduce delayed discharge by making sure that housing associations and tenant are supported to enable the adaptation of properties to meet the changing needs of individuals within our society.

So I very much appreciate the input and the contribution that is undertaken by housing associations, to enable people to live safely and independently at home for as long as possible. It's an example of how we've got to take a holistic view of our public services.

If somebody's spending time in hospital unnecessarily because they can't get their home adapted quickly enough to meet their needs. We are accommodating that individual and perhaps the most expensive setting we can possibly provide when they could be supported more safely in their own home, with the necessary adaptation.

 And I’m very open to representations about that whole question of adaptations and how the government can do more. I consider that to be very much part of the activist approach that government has got to take forward.

I’ve set out also a number of steps in relation to the importance that we attach to good maintenance of properties. The amendments to the Housing (Scotland) Bill to implement the equivalent of Awaab’s Law in Scotland is an important point to strike the right balance about investigating disrepair, and tackling the issue of repairs.

We have ongoing work that we all have to succeed in, in relation to supporting individuals affected by the RAAC issue and the challenges that are placed on individuals as a consequence, in addition to the work, that is necessary to address the challenges that allies on the question of cladding remediation.

And we have, of course, published a plan of action on cladding remediation, which has been the subject of public discussion and debate.

On all of these questions, the input and the dialogue with the SFHA is crucial to ensure that we get the approaches correct.

And the new duties for homelessness prevention outlined in the Housing (Scotland) Bill follow extensive consultation and are informed by the principles of joint public responsibility, earlier intervention and more choice through avoiding crisis, to prevent homelessness.

The new duties will ensure local authorities can act sooner to prevent homelessness, up to 6 months before, taking reasonable steps to ensure accommodation remains available for those at threat of homelessness.

Social landlords have a vital role to play in keeping their tenants safe, which is why the Bill includes a new duty on social landlords to have a domestic abuse policy outlining how they will support their tenants who are experiencing the horror of domestic abuse.

The housing sector in Scotland is undoubtedly in the midst of incredibly challenging times, and I reiterate my thanks to everyone here today for the steadfast and professional work that you do to improve the lives and wellbeing of tenants and communities.

The home-building boom of the post-War period should fill us with ambition for the scale and speed of what it is possible to achieve in this century, with all the innovations that the 21^st century has to offer.

We all have to think differently, approach the challenges differently – and I include government in that call as well.

Scotland has the ideas, the skills, and the agile population to pursue new ideas and new ways of working.

I hope that today I have given you a clear sense of the vision and the ambitions we have for Scotland, and a flavour of the work that we are doing in order to get there.

We know that, as a government, we can’t achieve any of this alone.

The events of the past few years have shown us very clearly that the best way to deliver the real and lasting improvements that are necessary and in people’s lives is to work collaboratively together.

So, as we celebrate 50 years of SFHA and look to the future, I am confident that the Scottish Government and SFHA will continue to work in partnership, delivering good quality housing and services for tenants across Scotland.

And determined that, together, we will achieve our vision of ensuring that everyone in Scotland has access to good quality, affordable, safe housing.

And that’s the commitment of my government.