30 September 2015
The Scottish Government should move to create opportunities for self build investment, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
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The RICS Residential Policy Review sets out a number of recommendations on how Government could do more to tackle the UK’s housing crisis. In particular it states that the self build market will not solve the housing crisis but it can make “considerable contributions to enhancing housing supply, and support community regeneration and the essential SME construction sector”.
In its recommendations, the paper states that Scottish Government housing policy “needs switch from assisting demand to assisting supply” and the creation of wider opportunities for investment particularly in the self build sector will help stimulate housebuilding.
A further proposal suggests increasing the supply of land available for housebuilding across the country by incentivising private landowners through the tax system to sell disused plots and including private sites in the brownfield register.
Jeremy Blackburn, Head of Policy at RICS said: “The most consistent feature of the housing market over the last 18 months has been a distinct shortage of new sales instructions. Average stock levels on surveyors’ books have dropped to lows not seen for at least three decades. If we are to get to grips with this country’s housing crisis, we need to look at supply-led measures across Government and the wider industry in order to get the market moving.”
