The Scottish Government has announced an additional £25m to support the construction of local authority homes.

The money, which is expected to support 3,000 jobs, takes the total government investment in council house building to £50m, the most spent in 30 years.

Just last week the Scottish Government announced the first 14 councils to benefit from the fund when almost £17m was allocated. Work is currently underway to allocate the remainder of the cash as quickly as possible.

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Announcing the additional investment on Friday, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon said: "The announcement of additional funding today will help local authorities to continue to reverse the decades of decline in council house building, providing people and their families with access to good quality homes that they can afford."

The council house building fund is just one part of a wider package supporting affordable housing in the economic downturn. Already the Scottish Government has among things announced a record £644m for the affordable housing investment programme this year, extended the open market shared equity pilot to cover the whole of Scotland, backed by £60m and announced its intention to legislate to end the right to buy on all new build social housing.

The Scottish Government has also launched the £35m Homeowners Support Fund which helps households in financial difficulty.

(GK/JM)