The Scottish housing crisis is by no means a new topic. Amidst flagging completions, with an 8% drop across the sector in 2025 according to latest Scottish Government figures, there is no end of attention surrounding it. However, what we’re still lacking is momentum. Whether you sit in government, local authority planning, development, housing associations or the supply chain, it’s something everyone is grappling with to find a solution.

Recent debates about how to spur housebuilding in Scotland has brought that into sharp focus, including the argument that there is plenty of land with planning permission and developers are simply not building it out. While there is sometimes truth to this, it oversimplifies a much more complex story.

From where I sit working with SME housebuilders across Scotland, the gap between consent and commencement is often where complexity starts to bite.

A consented site can still be a long way from being build-ready. Developers can spend months working through pre-commencement conditions, agreeing technical solutions, negotiating roads and drainage requirements, aligning on biodiversity and place-based expectations, and trying to finalise utility connections that are increasingly hard to secure to a predictable timetable.

All of that takes time and money before a spade goes into the ground and, while larger PLCs can often absorb that time and spread risk across a bigger portfolio, SME housebuilders feel it immediately, which can be the difference between a viable scheme and one that stalls.

Planning teams face a talent reckoning

Despite all this, the biggest drag on delivery in Scotland remains in the planning process itself. Capacity has long been an issue for planners, and this looks set to get worse. The State of the Profession 2025: Scotland report from The Royal Town Planning Institute (RPTI) reports that 10.3% of planners in Scotland are set to retire, and a further 14.2% expect to leave the profession in the coming years.

While employee turnover is to be expected, the RPTI report also highlights a lack of Scottish planning undergraduate degrees, meaning not enough people are coming through the backfill these roles, let alone adding to already stretched capacity.

That is why we need a clear roadmap to backfill and grow planning teams, not just warm words about reform, with funding to recruit as part of the answer, but also a serious effort to make planning an attractive career again through training routes, conversion pathways and practical entry points that reflect what the system needs.

What role can the public sector play?

One area up for debate is also whether the Scottish National Investment Bank should take a more active role in housebuilding. While this could definitely be helpful, there needs to be clear boundaries between enabling the market and crowding it out.

However, one area where it can make a genuine difference is infrastructure. Infrastructure is one of the most significant early costs and risks on many schemes, covering roads, utilities, remediation, drainage, site prep and the wider works needed to make development possible. When those costs land upfront, they hit SME developers hardest and make viability harder to stack up, particularly on marginal sites or in areas where abnormal costs are high.

If the Bank can support enabling infrastructure in a targeted way, that can unlock stalled or slow sites while also creating a positive spillover for the wider economy, supporting jobs, local supply chains and long term place making, and crucially removing a blocker without trying to replace private capital or distort decision making.

A simpler process to unlock SME housebuilding

The Scottish Government has also announced its intent to establish a new national housing agency, More Homes Scotland, with a focus on simplicity, scale and speed. The idea of a housing agency is not new, and Scotland has seen agencies come and go, so the difference this time will be whether it has the backing and the mandate to simplify delivery in a way that shows up on site, not just on paper.

One area I would like to see explored is how we speed up smaller schemes that should be straightforward. SME housebuilders are often delivering the types of projects Scotland needs most, including smaller sites, local regeneration, infill and edge of settlement schemes, and the homes that add up quickly when you remove friction. A practical reform would be to remove the need for council committee permission for smaller developments and instead allow a Planning Control Officer to sign off projects up to an agreed threshold, for example schemes under £10m in value or delivering 25 units or less.

While some authorities already operate delegated powers, clearer national thresholds and reduced committee referrals could further streamline smaller schemes. This would still allow for a level of scrutiny while modernising the process, cutting delays, reducing cost and allow planning teams to focus attention where it is most needed on major and complex applications.

If we want to unlock housing delivery in Scotland, we need to stop pretending there is a single culprit and start fixing the chain. That means more capacity in planning teams and a credible pipeline of new planners, targeted investment in enabling infrastructure that makes sites build ready and reform that speeds up smaller schemes without lowering standards, all within a policy environment that gives developers and funders confidence to commit.