Scottish home building industry leaders today demanded that the Scottish Government get on with the business of spending its accelerated funding for affordable housing and broaden its outlook across the private sector.

This follows a meeting of the Board of Homes for Scotland (the organisation which represents companies building 95% of new homes built for sale in Scotland) where the latest Scottish Government housing statistics, which showed a decrease of nearly 25% in the number of new homes started in 2008, were high on the agenda.

Chief Executive Jonathan Fair said: "Whilst the Scottish Government's own figures are worrying, this information is already many months behind that generated by the National House Building Council which recently reported a staggering 65% fall in the number of starts for the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2008."

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"Although the action taken by the Scottish Government in accelerating funding within its Affordable Housing Investment Programme is welcome and has indeed already generated some positive results for some of our member companies, the situation remains grave.

"Not only does the Scottish Government need to press on with actually spending this increased allocation, it also needs to implement new initiatives, potentially funded through the additional £53m Budget consequentials that have yet to be allocated, which have a direct impact on housing supply within the private sector."

Mr Fair said with buyers showing increasing levels of interest in purchasing new homes, the big stumbling block to converting sales is still the availability of mortgage financing and constantly changing lending criteria.

"One way the Scottish Government could help alleviate this problem would be to introduce a tailored version of the Homebuy Direct scheme, currently available in England.

"This offers an equity loan for part of the purchase price on affordable low cost homes for sale specifically within new build private developments, co-funded by the Government and the developer. This has already proved an effective mechanism to enable First Time Buyers, the industry’s lifeblood, into home ownership," he concluded.

(GK/JM)