Housing

WARM AND GREEN HOMES FOR ALL

Everyone in Scotland should have a warm home that they can afford to heat. As a priority, the Scottish Greens will put in place a home upgrade programme ensuring that all homes reach a minimum Energy Performance Standard C or above by 2030, reducing the average household energy costs by £270 per year. Simultaneously, we aim for heating homes to be zero carbon by 2040. We will support this programme through new legislation that provides absolute clarity and certainty for the sector, including homeowners, landlords, tenants, and those in the supply chain, allowing us to deliver the programme at the lowest possible cost and to maximise the wider economic and social benefits.
At least £500m of public investment will be made every year to deliver this goal for homes and other buildings, creating over 75,000 jobs and leveraging £7.5 billion in private investment.

Underlying this programme will be the principle of a just transition. No home will be left behind, allowing everyone to enjoy the health, financial and wellbeing benefits of upgraded homes, and we guarantee that those in fuel poverty will benefit from the transition.

We will:

• Significantly and urgently scale up existing energy efficiency and green heat programmes.
• Retain the interest-free loans and cashback incentives currently in place for private homeowners investing in energy efficiency and zero carbon heat.
• Fund an “energy leap” programme to pioneer and then roll-out deep retrofits at scale. This approach upgrades the most inefficient homes to the highest efficiency rating, taking a cost-effective whole street approach and using offsite manufacturing to improve quality and minimise disruption.
• Provide new multi-year funding for skills development, training and apprenticeships to expand and upskill the workforce.
• Establish a Green Rural Homes service, bringing together engagement, enhanced support and advice services for homeowners and landlords in rural areas that are off the gas grid.
• Introduce green heat grants for households to replace fossil fuel boilers with green alternatives, principally heat pumps, with the aim of installing 500,000 by 2030. Grants will be available and will mean that households pay no more than the cost of a gas boiler.
• Support a ban on new fossil fuel boilers from 2025 for buildings off the gas grid, and 2028 for all buildings.
• Establish a £500m heat networks fund to support the expansion of local and district heat networks, connecting 20,000 homes and creating 3,000 jobs.
• Seek agreement with the energy efficiency industry to source a minimum percentage of their products from Scotland.
• Immediately end public subsidies for oil and LPG boilers, and instead fund renewable and low carbon heating technologies.
• Require all new homes to meet passivhaus or other net-zero standards, be connected to the public transport system and be built in areas that are not in flood-risk zones. This will apply to all homes built from 2022 onwards.
• Require all private sector homes to meet at least EPC C at the point of sale of major refurbishment from 2025.
• Protect consumers by introducing a Scottish Quality Mark in partnership with the energy efficiency and domestic renewables sector, and require projects that benefit from public funding to comply with PAS 2035 standards.

A NEW DEAL FOR TENANTS

Renting in Scotland is expensive and insecure. Too many tenants pay extortionate amounts to live in damp, cold, and overcrowded homes. Landlords currently receive substantial support but lack accountability to their tenants. We will legislate to transform the private rented sector, providing greater security for tenants, regulating rents and improving standards.

We will:

• Establish a Private Rented Sector Regulator to oversee the sector, investigate tenants’ complaints and recommend future reforms.
• Ensure that landlords and letting agents are providing greater transparency through national registers and a strengthened registration process.
• Review the effectiveness of the First Tier Tribunal system.
• Ban winter evictions, and end unfair evictions by making all grounds for eviction discretionary.
• Ensure local authority private rented sector teams are adequately funded, allowing them to spend more time supporting tenants and landlords as well as enforcing standards.
• Strengthen Houses in Multiple Occupation licensing investigation and enforcement.
• Raise awareness of welfare entitlement, tenant rights and tenants unions.
• Give tenants the right to keep pets and redecorate.
• Introduce a points-based system of rent controls.

REVITALISE PUBLIC HOUSING

A century ago, Scotland’s councils built public housing in response to a severe housing crisis.

Now we need to do this again. There is still a severe lack of public housing, with an estimated 70,000 children on the waiting list for a socially rented home. We want to raise the status and availability of public housing. Anyone who wants a good quality home at an affordable rent should be given this opportunity.

We will:

• Build 84,000 homes for social rent by 2032 and buy land at its existing use value.
• Increase the role of councils in assembling land for housing and enhance their ability to buy properties on the open market.
• Review the Scottish Housing Quality Standard to ensure it is fit for purpose.
• Invest in innovative public housing for older people, embedded in local communities, with an emphasis on co-housing and multigenerational developments.
• For properties acquired under right-to-buy, give local Registered Social Landlords first right of refusal on purchase when they come on to the market.
• Ensure a fair share of investment in accessible housing for those with different housing needs.
• Give the Scottish Government responsibility for all housing debt owed by local authorities to the Public Works Loan Board, freeing up rental income to tackle much needed repairs.
• Strengthen the role of tenants and local authorities in the governance of Registered Social Landlords.
• Develop the role of  housing associations so they can act as anchor institutions for their local communities, supporting initiatives like community finance, community gardening, crèches, laundries, toy libraries and tool sharing.
• End homelessness by updating the legislative framework and rolling-out the Housing First approach. Where people who do not have access to a safe, secure and permanent home they should be offered permanent tenancies and tailored wrap-around support services.

GENUINELY AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Housing costs, including fuel and maintenance, are driving many people into poverty. The Scottish Greens will introduce a cross-cutting goal of ensuring that housing costs represent no more than 25% of a household’s income.

To increase the supply of housing, we will:

• Support the building of 70,000 homes by 2026 and a further 50,000 homes between 2027 and 2032, 70% of which should be for social rent.
• Ensure that short-term holiday lets are regulated and require planning consent for second homes.
• Tackle empty homes by granting local authorities the power to issue Empty Property Use Orders to bring vacant properties back into use.
• Review the taxation of vacant and derelict land to ensure landowners are incentivised to bring it back into use.
• Require private mass housebuilders to provide a proportion of affordable housing built to thesame standards as the rest of each development.
• Support housing co-operatives through providing financing options and targeted relief from Land and Buildings Transaction Tax.

In addition to our new deal for renters, to tackle excessive rents we will:

• Require social tenants to be given rent consultations as standard upon entering their tenancy.
• Support initiatives to allow tenants across housing tenures to have a say in setting rent levels.
• Reform affordable renting options such as Mid Market Rent, which is currently unfit for purpose.

THE SCOTTISH GREENS WILL ALSO

Raise the quality and status of rural housing

• Increase funding for Rural and Islands Housing Fund, Rural Housing Scotland and other facilitators of volunteer-led community housing initiatives.
• Secure a fair share of housing investment, ensuring that 11,000 homes are built in rural areas between 2021 and 2026.
• Ensure that rural communities are not damaged by tourism through reserving certain rural areas/ properties exclusively for permanent residencies.

Revitalise Scotland’s tenements

• Introduce a five yearly property condition survey for all tenement buildings.
• Require owners associations for all tenement buildings to handle repairs and maintenance.
• Make it easier to trace absent owners for discussions about repairs by opening up the landlord and land registers.
• Establish a loan fund for owners’ associations to carry out essential works.

Make the planning system deliver quality homes

• Set a universal statutory standard for habitable housing across all tenures.
• Encourage planning authorities to earmark a wide range of different types and sizes of housing on sites for development.
• Engage communities in all stages of local development planning.

Deliver a better deal for student renters

• Deliver a student accommodation strategy beginning with a review of the Purpose Built Student Accommodation sector.
• Ensure that all students, regardless of housing provider, have the same protections as those with Private Rented Tenancies.
• Ensure that rent controls apply to student accommodation.
• Support student housing co-operatives.