Tag Archives: housebuilding

9 April 2026 – today’s press releases

  • Cole-Hamilton sets out plan for a skills revolution
  • Scot Lib Dems call for investment in affordable housing in Mid Scotland & Fife

Cole-Hamilton sets out plan for a skills revolution

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today set out plans for a skills revolution as he met with young scientists at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh today.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats will:

  • Create a new industrial strategy that focuses on what we’re really good at and what we can be good at, and throw the weight and levers of government behind businesses that can help us achieve greater success in life sciences, energy, food and drink, fintech and financial services, defence and more.
  • Develop a new skills strategy, mapping where the gaps are and will be, and fitting training and education systems around it, so that the country secures the skills it needs in everything from social care to engineering and construction.
  • Repair Scotland’s colleges and vocational skills system, and safeguard the future of our world-leading universities.

In the recent budget negotiations, the party secured £70m to start to repair the damage that the SNP have inflicted on the college sector – a 10% budget increase. The party has also secured money to save Corseford College, Scotland’s first college for young adults with complex & additional needs and campaigned to save facilities for Scotland’s rural college in Fife.

Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

Scottish education just isn’t what it used to be. We used to have one of the best education systems in the world, but under the SNP it is now just average. The whole education system isn’t producing the range and depth of skills that businesses and our economy need. It’s ridiculous that the Scottish defence industry is having to hire 300 welders from the Philippines.

Our plan will invest in education at every stage, starting from a young age and continuing throughout adulthood. We want every child to get the support and attention they need at school, so they leave with the skills, confidence and resilience to be happy and successful, whatever they choose to do next.

We will repair Scotland’s colleges and vocational skills system, and safeguard the future of our world-leading universities so that we can deliver a skills revolution.

Unlike the SNP, Scottish Liberal Democrats would get ahead of the curve instead of waiting to pick up the pieces, making the most of Scotland’s homegrown skills, engineering supply chains and natural advantages.

If you believe Scotland needs change, then every vote for the Scottish Liberal Democrats on the second peach ballot will deliver change with fairness at its heart. Scotland deserves better. And with the Scottish Liberal Democrats, you can vote for it.

Scot Lib Dems call for investment in affordable housing in Mid Scotland & Fife

Scottish Liberal Democrat lead candidate for Mid Scotland & Fife, councillor Claire McLaren has today called on the Scottish Government to invest in affordable housing in Stirling, Perth & Kinross, Clackmannanshire and Fife as she revealed that the number of homes completed has fallen by a third over the past two years.

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Urgent provision of UK housing is now required

We will be fighting for the young people of our country if we demand that the government declare this year a national emergency to provide thousands of new houses, especially affordable homes, before the next General Election.

The house price-to-earnings ratio shows that in 2024-25 a home cost roughly 8 to 9 times the average individual wage to buy, compared to about 5 to 6 times twenty years ago. With private rents additionally being so high now, it is small wonder that, even if they are working full-time, many young people in Britain are these days remaining in their parental home into their 20s and even 30s. With house prices only reducing slightly recently, the need for rapid provision of more small affordable homes for young people, whether for single people or couples, is evident. But much more evident are three or four-bedroom Executive-type houses being built on new estates country-wide.

The government after its election promised to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029, and pledged in July it would build up to 300,000 affordable homes over a decade, 60% of them for social rent. Our own party’s policy, passed at the Bournemouth Conference in September 2023, is for 150,000 social homes (that is, homes costing less than 50% of current market value) to be built every year by the end of the next Parliament. Neither the government’s pledge nor our own party’s policy look at present remotely attainable.

Posted in Op-eds | 38 Comments

Targets aren’t policies – the flawed Liberal Democrat position on homes and planning

The “Building Communities” motion last autumn left us with a target of 380,000 new homes a year, despite opposition from ALDC and most of the Party hierarchy. The grassroots, especially the young, don’t trust their colleagues who have to work with government at all levels.

Targets like this are gestures that discredit our radical tradition. They are not policies and they are bound to fail unless a Party has policies that can deliver them. Noticeably none of the policies in the motion were opposed. Just the target.
The national housing target merely “feeds the beast” that is the cartel of national homebuilders and speculative landowners, in combination with lenders who between them kill our real economy. I began my working life 50 years ago as a chartered builder working for one of them. I wondered why housing site construction always made a loss until the regional manager took me aside at a training function and said: “Tony, we make all our money on land deals.” So began my inyerest in land economics.

“Investment” in a finite natural resource simply hands over wealth created by entrepreneurs and workers, to be locked up in bank balances as unearned gains. Legalised theft. It inflates the balance sheets of large companies that plunder and speculate at our expense. That wealth needs to be re-invested in things society needs, not in pandering to greed.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 29 Comments

21 November 2019 – the overnight press release

Lib Dems: Labour can’t keep their housing promises without EU workers

Responding to Labour’s council and social housing programme, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for Housing, Communities and Local Government Tim Farron said:

It won’t be councils denying planning permission for new council homes under Labour, it will be Labour denying entry to the EU workers travelling here to build them.

10% of our construction industry workforce is made up of EU citizens, but – just like the Tories – Corbyn’s Labour has failed to back free movement from the EU. Under Labour, the workforce we rely on will no longer be available

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 12 Comments
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