27 Apr 2026

Accelerating home-building in Scotland: A consultation on incentives and penalties to speed up housing delivery

General comments

We welcome the Scottish Government’s consideration of incentives and penalties that could be used to speed up housing delivery – particularly where planning permission has been granted but sites are not being progressed. We are not delivering enough homes across Scotland to meet a range of needs across tenures which has resulted in record numbers of homeless applications and increasing use of temporary accommodation.

All options for simplifying the planning system and speeding up housing delivery must be considered, but the Scottish government should also be mindful of ensuring quality is not compromised in favour of speed, and to avoid any unintended consequences. The Scottish government’s approach must be clear, proportionate and implementable. Local authorities’ capacity to support any additional duties in relation to monitoring and implementation will be crucial to success.

Any new measures must also be considered as part of the wider review of housing delivery in Scotland, including recommendations of the Housing Finance Taskforce and Scottish government’s plans for a new national housing body. The changes proposed in this consultation will not address slow housing delivery in isolation and do not consider the impact of external factors such as inflationary pressures, materials and skills shortages.

1) Could fiscal incentives offering relief to other charges help to accelerate build-out rates?

Unsure.

Please explain your answer:

While we think that the Scottish government should consider all options that may increase the supply of much needed housing, we do not think that applying tax reliefs would provide enough of an incentive to be effective and would result in reduced tax revenues. The Scottish government should consider other types of support that could be offered, such as guidance, mediation or strategic oversight. There could be a strategic role here for the proposed new national housing agency, More Homes Scotland.

2) Should we introduce a tax on sites which have been allocated for residential development and/or have permission for homes, but are not being built out as expected, as set out in option 1?

Unsure.

Please explain your answer:

While we agree that all options to progress stalled sites should be explored, the Scottish government must be mindful of the risk that penalties may discourage development or result in increased costs being passed on. If this option is pursued, clear guidance and exemptions would need to be included to ensure a balance of risk and not to deter investment. Rather than a blanket approach, it may be more appropriate to target sites that have stalled with evidence of delays being caused by the developer and/or owner rather than external factors.

We agree with the suggestion in the consultation that changes to existing taxation would be an obvious route if this option is taken forward, and that the overall aim should be to encourage delivery rather than generate income. However, any additional funds raised should be used to support housing supply. This could be directly subsidising affordable housing supply, investing in local infrastructure or land acquisition and/or remediation.

Alternative approaches to taxation should be explored and could include loss of planning permission for sites not being developed, use of compulsory purchase, compulsory sale or leasing which the Scottish government has also recently consulted on.

3) Should we bring forward powers for reporting on development progress and powers to intervene where it is considered to be unreasonably slow, as set out in option 2?

Yes

Please explain your answer:

We agree that closer monitoring of sites would be useful and could provide the basis for intervention where sites ate not progressing, but data collection must be proportionate, and resources would be required to adequately monitor progress. Powers to intervene would need to be underpinned by clear guidance and, to be effective, they would need to be consistently enforced.

The guidance would need to consider a range of factors which could impact the speed of development across different sites and different contexts – for example, the location, complexity and reliance on a range of partners.

In addition to penalties for stalled sites, the Scottish government should consider how developers could be supported to unlock delivery of new homes. For example, the UK government’s New Homes Accelerator Programme which was launched in 2024 aims to support the delivery of new homes through large-scale developments by facilitating collaboration between the government, Homes England, the Greater London Authority, local authorities, developers and other key stakeholders.

The UK government reports that this approach of support and collaboration has so far successfully unblocked 125,000 new homes and will now be rolled out to support smaller sites (under 500 homes).

4) Should we bring forward legislation to amend the development hierarchy, to enable us to introduce more streamlined planning processes on planning applications for smaller sites, as outlined in option 3?

Unsure.

Please explain your answer:

We agree with streamlining the planning system as far as possible to benefit all stakeholders. However, small sites can be challenging to develop for several reasons, such as viability, infrastructure or costly remediation which will not be addressed through a simplified planning process alone. We would also have concerns about any lessening of standards or scrutiny based on the size of site.

A more efficient planning system requires resources and adequate staffing levels to be able to assess applications in a timely manner and providing support for those seeking permissions. A well-functioning planning system will improve the process for all stakeholders, including small and medium developers.

5) Do you think that encouraging more diverse housing outputs across the pipeline of deliverable housing land would increase the pace of build-out?

Unsure.

Please explain your answer:

We support the development of mixed tenure sites and providing a range of housing choices for people with different needs and aspirations. However, mixed tenure developments can pose some challenges, and we would urge caution in trying to set rigid parameters for tenure mix which should be based on local housing needs analysis.

Colleagues in Northern Ireland co-hosted a sector wide workshop in January 2026 on delivering mixed tenure developments. Their findings highlight several challenges in delivering mixed tenure sites as well as suggested actions. Relevant points for consideration here include:

Inconsistency in decision making across local authority areas.
Lack of knowledge and understanding of different tenure types and their place in the market.
Financial viability of different housing products in different markets could make setting specific targets difficult/unattractive.
The need for better data to inform local housing needs assessments.