Chamber and committees

As set out in last year's Programme for Government, the Executive is committed to ensuring that in its first three years 18,000 new and improved homes are built for affordable renting or low cost home ownership. Good progress has been made towards meeting this commitment with Scottish Homes currently planning to give approvals for 6,637 new and improved homes in the current year (1999-2000). The following table shows these approvals split by Scottish Homes' five regions:-

Highlands and Islands	284
North and East	1,378
Lothian, Borders and Forth Valley	1,284
South and West	1,395
Glasgow and North Clyde	2,296

I am currently discussing with Scottish Homes how it plans to deliver the remaining new and improved homes needed to meet the Programme for Government target., It is too early to say where these will be built until the outcome of Scottish Homes' assessment of needs analysis and ongoing discussions with other interested parties, including local authorities, is completed.In the current year Scottish Homes grant in aid is £282.3 million. Subject to parliamentary consideration of the Budget Bill, I expect that its grant in aid allocation for 2000-01 and 2001-02 will be £272.8 million and £264.4 million respectively.

Section 5 of The Housing (Scotland) Act 1987 (Right to Buy) (Cost Floor) Determination 1999 describes the range of relevant works whose costs are used to calculate the Cost Floor of a property. The ability and scope of a landlord to include in that calculation the relevant costs incurred by the property's previous landlord, is set out in Section 6 of the 1999 Determination.

Statistical returns to Scottish Homes identified that around 43,000 households of non-charitable registered housing associations do not have a right to buy.A logistic regression using 1996 SHCS data on people who have bought under RTB and their properties, established statistically the quantitative significance of age of head of household, income, and type of property inhabited (i.e whether flat or house) to the decision to take up RTB.The 43,000 households were classified into one of six groups depending on these criteria, and the likely take up on a group specific basis was computed. The take up for each group was then totalled to give an overall estimated take up rate of 2%.

Housing associations are not eligible to receive grants for rent and ownership (GRO grants).

Where Councils have set target ballot dates, these range from November 2000 to early 2002.

I issued a paper on A New Single Social Housing Tenancy and a modernised Right-to-Buy on 7 December. I have since received representations from a number of professional and representative organisations including Shelter and SFHA who have raised concerns. These will be discussed early in the new year.

The table below shows the number of housing association rented houses in each area as a percentage of the total number of local authority, Scottish Homes and housing association houses in that area:

Highland	18.2%
Moray	11.5%
Angus	18.8%
Aberdeenshire	12.0%
Eilean Siar	6.9%
Orkney	23.7%
Shetland	7.9%
Scottish Borders	32.8%
Dumfries & Galloway	13.9%

Sources:

1. Housing association and Scottish Homes stock - Scottish Homes (data correct as at 31 March 1999)2. Local authority housing stock. Local Authority Housing Revenue Account return (data correct as at 30September 1998)

Statistics about housing association grant awarded to housing associations are only readily available from 1 April 1989, when Scottish Homes was established. From that date until 31 March 2000, a total of £2,422,559,000 in housing association grant will have been allocated to housing associations.Enquiries are being made to establish, if possible, the amount of grant allocated in the period from 1986. I shall write to the member once those enquiries have been completed.

The available information for 1999-2000 is given below.

Planned outputs		Forecast outputs		Position at 30-9-99
Starts	Completions	Starts	Completions	Starts	Completions
1,228	739	1,070	741	449	255

A number of councils have still to submit their returns.Information from councils indicate that, as at 31 March 1999, 695 units had been completed under the New Housing Partnership programme.

The Scottish Executive recognises the problems that are faced by many former coalmining communities in the Lothian area and across Scotland. This is why we are providing the Coalfields Regeneration Trust with resources of £4.5 million over three years to support the regeneration of coalfield communities across Scotland.The Coalfields Regeneration Trust is now inviting applications for funding from organisations and community groups across Scotland. Once these applications have been processed, decisions will be made by the Trust about which projects to fund.