SCOTLAND has fallen drastically behind England when it comes to building new homes, an industry trade body has claimed.
Homes for Scotland said a shortfall of 80,000 new homes has built up over the last decade.
Chief executive Nicola Barclay said this sluggish growth stood in “stark contrast” to England.
Speaking to Holyrood’s Economy Committee, she said housebuilding was advancing at a “very similar” rate in Scotland and England before the recession.
She added: “But since then, since the recession and since 2012, that figure has really split, and in England we’re now back to almost pre-recession levels, whereas in Scotland we’re only about 68 per cent of where we were before the recession.
“The main difference is policy. It’s not legislation, it’s policy – and it’s planning policy.
“In England, they brought out the National Planning Policy Framework in 2012, and since then you have had a huge amount of growth in the numbers.
“We calculate that we have a shortfall of about 80,000 homes across Scotland now, from pre-recession, because the shortfall every year is compounding. And so we need to do a lot about that.”
Ms Barclay said the “desire for new homes has to come from the top”, before it then feeds down into local authorities and communities.
She said: “We’ve seen that huge success in England with that method.
“What are the implications for that? We have more home builders who are home-grown in Scotland now looking to invest more in England, because they see that it’s easier to build and get quicker and better returns on their investment.”
She said small and medium-sized businesses have been locked out of the market since the recession, adding: “They were a huge, vibrant part of the market pre-recession. There are so many barriers now that they just can’t come back in.”
But Craig McLaren, director of Scotland and Ireland at the Royal Town Planning Institute, said the key issue was getting shovels in the ground, not planning policy.
It came as MSPs on the Economy Committee continue to take evidence on Scotland's construction industry.
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