Ahead of next Monday's keenly anticipated pre-budget report by the Chancellor, the Scottish home building industry has reiterated the case for a substantially funded UK-wide economic reflation package - emphasising that Scotland must not be ignored.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, Jonathan Fair, Chief Executive of Homes for Scotland, the organisation which represents companies building 95% of the country’s new homes, said: "It is imperative in considering such a series of measures (as has been widely reported and speculated upon over recent days), that these will have direct consequential benefits for Scotland with corresponding application and effects here."

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Believing that any reflation package should have the central themes of proactive new public investment aligned to wider private taxation incentives, Fair went on to detail the sort of measures which would be most appropriate and effective for the home building industry.

These include: massively accelerating the provision of publicly funded roads, transportation, schools, health and community facilities without which development cannot proceed, hugely increasing socially affordable housing investment and abolishing Stamp Duty on house purchase transactions in their entirety for at least a year. In addition to reintroducing "Mortgage Interest Tax Relief" to inject new capital back into the market and substantially reducing VAT on any transactions associated with the repair, renovation and refurbishment of a home.

(GK/JM)