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From 2 September, first-time buyers can apply to the Open Market Shared Equity Scheme (OMSE) alongside the priority access groups. OMSE aims to help those on low to moderate incomes secure a home that they may not otherwise have been able to do.

The new £1 million national fund to leave will be distributed on the basis of population of each local authority area in Scotland. This was the method used in the fund to leave pilot.

The evaluation of the pilot fund to leave by Scottish Women’s Aid showed that 511 women received support and the average amount received was £825.

Up to £4.9 billion will be invested in housing through a mixture of public and privately leveraged investment. The upcoming Scottish Government Budget and Scottish Spending Review will set out further detail.

We know that local authorities across Scotland are facing significant housing and homelessness challenges. However, some are experiencing much greater pressure than others, as evidenced by higher numbers of households living in temporary accommodation.

The additional £2 million investment in Discretionary Housing Payments is intended to provide targeted support where it is most needed. Local authorities are best placed to identify households in temporary accommodation who can benefit from this funding, based on their local knowledge and operational expertise.

We will work closely with local authorities to monitor the impact of this funding. This includes gathering data on how the payments are being used and assessing outcomes for households receiving support.

We will also be seeking feedback on the impact of this funding through the discretionary housing payment practitioners’ forum.

We will work with Scottish Women’s Aid to ensure the fund to leave is open to women across Scotland who are in need of financial support to leave an abusive partner.

In 2024–25, the Scottish Government supported the delivery of 966 affordable homes, including 351 acquisitions and 615 voids, through £40 million in targeted acquisition and voids funding.

The Scottish Government will deliver up to £4.9 billion of investment over the coming four years, with homes delivered through a mixture of public and privately leveraged investment. Further details will be outlined in the forthcoming Spending Review.

Every planning application must be determined on its own merits. When applying planning judgement all relevant policies and material considerations need to be weighed, following the requirements set by section 25 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1997. As such, it would not be appropriate to set a target number for approval of individual applications. Nevertheless, the planning application approval rate has stayed consistently high for a number of years, with over 92% of applications approved in 2023-24.

A range of planning improvements have and are being progressed to support the housing emergency, including those in the Planning and the Housing Emergency Delivery Plan (November 2024), the Programme for Government (May 2025) and Housing Emergency Action Plan (September 2025). These build on the substantial reforms to legislation and national policy in recent years.

For example, and as committed in the Housing Emergency Action Plan, the Scottish Government issued a notification direction on 2 September to enable close monitoring of the implementation of national planning policy on housing, where a planning application is for 10 or more proposed new homes on land not allocated for housing. This activity will enable Ministerial intervention where required and inform whether further policy action is required.

We regularly engage with stakeholders, including planning authorities and industry representatives to monitor feedback on the impact of changes made through planning reforms.

The overall staffing of planning services is a matter for local authorities and it is up to them to decide how their resources are allocated based on their priorities. The Scottish Government does not dictate to authorities how much money should be allocated to planning services.

We have taken action to improve the financial resources available to planning authorities, introducing an annual inflation linked increase to planning fees with the fees increasing in line with inflation in December 2024 and most recently in June 2025, extended discretionary charging and introduced fees for appealing planning decisions to local review bodies and Scottish Ministers.

The National Planning Hub offers support to planning authorities when requested, including capacity and access to expertise. A priority area for the Hub’s assistance is on housing, to support authorities address the Housing Emergency.

Recognising the pressures in planning authorities, the planning actions in the Housing Emergency Action Plan are limited in their demands on them. They will be undertaken by Scottish Government and the National Planning Improvement Champion to support improvements to the planning system.

To support longer-term growth of the planning profession and reversing the decline in professional planners working in public authorities, we have recently appointed 17 new future planners to support their development and are providing 30 bursaries for post-graduate planning this year.

We have taken action to improve the financial resources available to planning authorities, introducing an annual inflation linked increase to planning fees with those changes increasing fees in line with inflation in December 2024 and most recently in June 2025. We have extended the range of services for which an authority can introduce charges, to include the preparation of processing agreements and the preparation and delivery of Masterplan Consent Areas. In June 2025 we also introduced fees for appealing planning decisions to Local Review Bodies and Scottish Ministers, ensuring that these services can meet customers’ expectations.

In addition, the National Planning Hub is providing targeted support to planning authorities, including capacity and access to expertise, to help them to determine applications for housing projects and to progress their local development plans.