Housing & Planning

• Fully recognise the increased workforce that our area will need to deliver the clean power revolution for the UK.
• To plan for an appropriate number of houses to be built, along with sufficient investment in related infrastructure.
• Ensure that sufficient affordable new housing is built for our growing workforce.
• Invest in planning by ensuring that there are enough places in our education system to train the planners that we need for our future housing and commercial development needs.
• Modify the current planning system so it is less adversarial and enfranchises entire communities to have their voices heard in planning decisions, rather than just those who understand how the system works and how to be heard. It must encourage those who support developments to be heard as well as those who object.

What is the issue that needs to be solved?

Across the Central Highlands there is a current need for over 10,000 new homes to be built. Our best estimates are that the clean power revolution and other large-scale projects will require an additional 14,000 new homes over the next decade. Our current pace of building won’t achieve half of that target.

The Scottish Government bases future housing need largely on demographic change rather than future workforce requirement. The government is aware of the workforce requirements in our region to deliver the clean power revolution, but their housing needs assessment methodology doesn’t take that into account. That needs to change.

Once that change has been made, they need to incentivise and mandate house building across the region to match demand. We don’t pretend there are simple solutions to make this happen, but it will take the legislative and co-ordinating powers of the government to ensure that it does.