Government promises of investment are welcome, but a more collaborative approach is the focus of the 2017 RICS Annual Conference for Scotland next month, writes Bob Serafini.

A fresh Scottish Government commitment to deliver 50,000 “affordable” homes over the next five years, backed by an initial £470 million of direct capital investment in the latest draft budget, is viewed in the housing sector as a great step forward after years of having to battle hard with health and education for a fair share of public spending.

But RICS, which will debate the issue at its annual Scottish conference at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh on Thursday, February 9, is among several organisations calling for more focus on the contribution that other industry players can make to tackling what they are not afraid to call a housing “crisis”. While welcoming the proposed investment, the majority of which will cater for social rent, this professional body for surveyors would prefer to see an approach aimed at increasing supply across all tenures.

The RICS respected market surveys regularly reflect the chronic lack of overall supply, and it is uncomfortable with social housing being presented as the panacea to solve the problem.

Policy manager Hew Edgar advocates a more holistic approach: “The latest budget missed the opportunity to assist all participants within the housing sector – either through financial support for house builders or through the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) framework, which was frozen.”

With housing developers not building enough to meet demand, the lack of supply is driving up prices, compounding the difficulty in raising sufficient deposits for a mortgage, knocking young people out of the ownership market and into private renting, where rent levels are increasing.

“All housing tenures are gripped within the housing crisis and we would hope that future policy and legislation is more cross-sector in focus,” said Edgar. RICS chairman in Scotland, Archie Rintoul said: “For many years, housing was not a priority and very much overshadowed by other areas of the economy, and its current political priority is an opportunity to move forward. “We welcome this laudable target but there are broader aspects of housing that need to be addressed. In the last full year for which we have figures (to end March 2016), a total of around 17,000 houses were constructed in Scotland – 12,500 in the private sector and 4500 public.”

One of the fastest ways of producing large numbers of new homes is through purpose built Private Rented Sector (PRS) homes, which are delivering tens of thousands of properties in England and hold a strong appeal to the mobile and flexible Generation Rent.

This is large scale provision of institutionally backed high quality new build rented stock, not to be confused with individual buy to let schemes by private landlords, but projects are so far thin on the ground in Scotland. A £60m LaSalle backed Dandara scheme is progressing at Stoneywood, Aberdeen, Moda is in planning for one on the former Strathclyde Police HQ site in Pitt Street, Glasgow, and EDI Group have a proposal for Edinburgh’s India Quay.

There remain hopes a government rental income guarantee scheme and less focus on the controversial issue of rent capping will help move this option forward in 2017. The conference will examine some of the barriers involved in increasing housing supply with a panel debate featuring Nicola Barclay, chief executive of Homes for Scotland, Patrick Flynn, head of housing and regeneration services at Glasgow City Council, and Tom Barclay, property and development director at the Wheatley Group.

Nicola Barclay would like to see a return to the 25,000 homes a year that were being built before the recession but argues the main thing is to look at the entire housing system and make sure it is functioning well regardless of tenure: “We often forget that we are trying to help people here. Sometimes they will be in social renting, sometimes mid market, sometimes in home ownership, and that one person will move between these as their life develops. With a rising population and people living longer we need a greater depth of different products.”

There are renewed calls to bring empty properties, particularly in our town centres, back into use, while helping small and medium sized property developers, whose numbers were devastated during the economic crash, make a significant impact at local level.

It may be an old chestnut, but reform of the country’s planning system has proved a hard nut to crack over the years and who better than the Scottish Government’s chief planner John McNairney to explain some of the thinking behind current consultation on a 20 point plan to bring us up to scratch?

There will be great interest in this morning session, particularly if anything he says conflicts with an earlier address by Kevin Stewart, the Minister for Local Government and Housing. Many other critical issues will also come under the spotlight, with sessions on the chronic skills shortage in the construction industry (see story below), the importance of sustainable infrastructure projects, regeneration of town and city centres, and an update on technologies like BIM which surveyors should be embracing.

This is all overlaid of course by the context of the uncertain business environment we are operating under until the issue of Brexit is resolved. A speculative session on what the post Brexit landscape will look like has attracted some intriguing contributors. Mike Russell MSP, who enjoys the title of Minister for UK negotiations on Scotland’s place in Europe, head of economic modelling at the Fraser of Allander Institute, Katerina Lisenkova, senior adviser at PwC Michael Moore, and professor of economics at the University of Stirling David Bell will suggest ways to forward plan. For added interest there is a view from William Dowson, agent, Scotland, at the Bank of England on the country’s economic outlook and how the construction sector is performing.