An empowered More Homes Scotland must be given significant authority to effectively address the nation’s severe housing crisis, according to a pivotal new industry report. Published on May 28, 2026, by Scottish Housing News, the report, titled ‘More Homes Scotland: Turning a National Housing Agency into a Delivery Machine,’ emphasizes that the proposed national housing agency requires a clear mandate, formal powers, and a practical delivery role to succeed in its ambitious goals.
The report, a collaborative effort by Building Relations PR and Burness Paull, synthesizes insights from an April roundtable discussion in Edinburgh, involving key leaders from Scotland’s housing, planning, development, investment, and policy sectors. Its central finding points to a systemic challenge in Scottish housing delivery, not a lack of ambition, but a critical need for enhanced alignment across land, infrastructure, planning, finance, and policy.
Impact Analysis on Scottish Real Estate
The implications for Scotland’s broader real estate landscape are profound. The report underscores that without robust empowerment, More Homes Scotland risks becoming another bureaucratic hurdle rather than a facilitator. The urgency of this call to action is amplified by recent Scottish Government housing statistics from March, which revealed a concerning downturn in new home completions. In the year to December 2025, new housebuilding activity across all sectors fell by 13% to 17,336 homes, while starts declined by 6% to 14,999. Affordable housing delivery faced even steeper drops, with completions down 25%, starts down 15%, and approvals down 9% in 2025. As of December 2025, only 32,479 affordable homes had been delivered towards the ambitious target of 110,000 by 2032.
This fragmented system, where critical decisions on land, planning, infrastructure, finance, and public policy are often made in isolation, creates significant delays, inflates costs, and introduces uncertainty into complex development projects. The report advocates for treating housing as essential economic infrastructure, recognizing its vital contribution to economic growth, labor mobility, public health outcomes, productivity, regeneration, and community resilience.
“Scotland does not lack ambition when it comes to housing, but it does need a more joined-up, practical and empowered system for delivery.”
Rachel Colgan, founder of Building Relations, highlighted this sentiment, stating, “Scotland does not lack ambition when it comes to housing, but it does need a more joined-up, practical and empowered system for delivery.”
Context and Background
More Homes Scotland, announced earlier in 2026, is slated to commence operations in 2027-28, with full functionality expected by 2028-29. Its stated aim is to accelerate housebuilding of all types, emphasizing simplicity, scale, and speed. However, the report’s contributors warn that this vision can only be realized if the agency is designed as a practical delivery body with the authority to coordinate effectively across various governmental tiers, local authorities, infrastructure providers, funders, and developers. Key recommendations include granting the agency a clear purpose, enabling early intervention on stalled sites, improving access to land and patient capital, and ensuring policy ambition is rigorously tested against viability and deliverability.
Immediate barriers identified by participants include constrained land supply, inconsistent planning interpretations across Scotland’s 32 local authorities, fragmented infrastructure approvals, complex policy layering, viability pressures, and a notable lack of long-term patient capital, particularly for smaller builders and rural housing projects. The potential role of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in increasing housing supply, especially in rural areas, was also highlighted, though these builders continue to face significant hurdles from protracted planning timescales and upfront capital exposure to infrastructure uncertainty and limited long-term finance.
Louise Chambers, Real Estate Partner at Burness Paull LLP, emphasized the current burden on developers: “Key sites which could deliver valuable housing can be held back by fragmented ownership, existing infrastructure constraints or other related issues, and could be addressed differently. At the moment that burden falls on the developer, which adds more time, more cost and more viability pressure.” The report suggests a more active public role in land assembly, infrastructure funding, and site de-risking, advocating for a ‘land shop’ model that would provide developers not just with land, but also with the practical support needed to unlock its potential.
What’s Next for More Homes Scotland
The path forward for More Homes Scotland will hinge on how the Scottish Government integrates these critical recommendations into the agency’s foundational structure. The coming months will be crucial for defining the agency’s formal powers and operational framework. Stakeholders will be closely watching for legislative changes and policy directives that empower the agency to coordinate decision-making and remove existing barriers to housing delivery. The success of this initiative could redefine Scotland’s approach to housing, creating a more agile and responsive system capable of meeting the country’s urgent needs and stabilizing the real estate market. Failure to heed these warnings could see the housing crisis deepen, with significant economic and social repercussions.
The establishment of a truly effective More Homes Scotland is not merely about building more houses; it is about constructing a more coherent, collaborative, and commercially credible system for sustainable growth and community resilience across the nation.
