The SNP government is to build 1,000 new council houses in Scotland at a cost of £120 million. First Minister Alex Salmond said: “We are working in partnership with local government to provide a new generation of council housing.” He said the scheme would create 2,000 new jobs.
He said he also intends to end the right to buy for tenants in newly built council homes “to protect all new social housing” from the ravages of the rules brought in by the last Conservative government, under Margaret Thatcher, which “has removed so much of our social housing stock since the 1980s”.
Mary Mulligan, Labour’s housing spokesperson, welcomed the move but described it as “too little, too late” and called on the SNP to reverse its budget cuts and restore grants to housing associations to the same level they were under Labour.
Meanwhile, campaign group Defend Council Housing holds its national meeting in Sheffield on July 10 to discuss its response to the Con-Dem coalition government’s plans to cut housing benefit.
