East Lothian Labour
East Lothian Council’s Cabinet today reported that the current administration has built more new Council Houses that the SNP.
The Cabinet report gave the Council house completions for the current Labour-led Administration as 363 between 2012 and 2017.
The Cabinet Member for Housing Cllr Norman Hampshire thanked the Council Staff for all their hard work in delivering the much needed houses. He also indicated his disappointment that the Housing Associations did not deliver a single house in 2014/15 due to the cut in Scottish Government housing grant from £76k to £44k. The £76k was set by the last Labour-led Scottish Executive in 2007 that made the delivery of affordable homes financially viable for Housing Associations.
Cllr Norman Hampshire said:
“This Labour-led Administration has made good progress on the delivery of 363 new council house completions and other affordable housing developments in East Lothian. However, this work has been hampered by the SNP Government’s changes to the funding available to help build new council houses. Despite their rhetoric, SNP Ministers are simply not delivering the level of assistance councils need.
“We know that there is significant demand for more affordable homes across the county, and the recently approved Local Development Plan sets out our proposals for addressing this need. We will continue to deliver more council housing that is affordable to local Tenants and the Council’s Housing Budget.
“I would like to emphasise that the Labour Group are very concerned that despite our new build programme our waiting times have increased to 400 days due to increased demand in East Lothian and the Scottish Government’s removal of the priority need.”