Will the advocates of housing stock transfer, such as Wendy Alexander and Frank McAveety, now be speaking up for council house building in the Scottish Parliament? For it looks as if the winners in the new housing policy may be those areas such as Edinburgh which voted against stock transfer, despite the urgings of the Scottish Executive. Under Brown's new policy, the capital city will presumably now be able to start building again, using its annual housing rent receipts as collateral. With 24,000 people on Edinburgh's waiting list and 100 applications for every council home, it will not be before time.
But "Brown's new policy" will not necessarily apply north of the border and Edinburgh's SNP-LibDem administration is unlikely to opt for a wholesale adoption of either the old or new Labour policy on council housing. As for the Scottish Executive, it is concentrating its eggs in this particular basket for the moment - little sign there of a renewed emphasis on council-owned housing.
We will know that a return to building council houses is imminent if the governments north and south of the border address the right to buy issue. Until then, there is no point in building council houses when they have to be sold off at a massive discount under the Right to Buy scheme.
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I did wonder if Iain Macwhirter had lost the place when writing this article. As you say, 'cos Gordon Brown says there is to be a new housing policy does not mean that will be the case north of the border. Mind you, when you read what Brown actually said, he seems to have also lost any awareness of there being devolved powers on housing.
So far as reality up here goes... there was an oddly-weighted posture adopted by Nicola Sturgeon at the last meeting of the Scottish Parliament Local Government & Communities Committee a couple of weeks back.
She said that the SNP Executive does support social housing and the present construction targets set for it. However, she also went on to several times emphasise that the current level of subsidies (almost wholly to our heavily-staffed and highly-salaried housing associations) were too high, growing and "unsustainable".
Makes you wonder where she's going on this one.
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