Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP) guidance note MHDGN 2024/01

Introduction

The Scottish Government wants everyone to have a safe, energy efficient home that is affordable and meets their needs in the place they want to be. Housing to 2040 sets out the Scottish Government’s approach about increasing the supply of homes across all tenures through a range of measures including:

• the Housing and Planning Delivery Framework, which reinforces the links between planning and housing requirements to support the provision of the right homes in the right places to create and sustain thriving communities. Local Housing Strategy guidance underpins the importance of strong alignment between housing and planning authorities and encourages local authorities to demonstrate how they are supporting new and existing neighbourhoods based on Place-Making principles and to promote housing’s role in the building of successful and sustainable places.
• the Affordable Housing Supply Programme and, as part of that, the Rural and Islands Housing Fund and Rural Affordable Homes for Key Workers Fund
• building investor confidence and attracting further mobile capital into housing
• making best use of existing homes, including bringing empty homes back into use
• the Gypsy/Travellers Accommodation Fund, which is providing funding for more and better Gypsy/Traveller accommodation.

Housing to 2040 sets out the Scottish Government’s ambitions for how it wants the housing and communities of the future to be, with actions on how to achieve that. The strategy shows how integral housing is to the Scottish Government’s objectives of tackling poverty and inequality, and our continuing work to end homelessness, creating and supporting jobs, meeting energy efficiency and decarbonisation aims as well as delivery of fuel poverty and child poverty targets, and creating connected, cohesive communities.

The Scottish Government remains focussed on its target of delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. To support that we have brought forward the review scheduled for 2026-2027 to 2024, which will concentrate on deliverability.