Elected Member Briefing - Affordable housing

About this Briefing Note 

Report by: Nicola Sworowski, Place Strategies Manager and Chief Planning Officer.

Date: 20 May 2026

Subject: Affordable Housing Supply Programme - 25/26 End of Year Summary

Responsible Officer: James Ross, Affordable Housing Enabler

Details

Purpose

To provide an end of financial year (25/26) update on the Affordable Housing Supply Programme in Perth and Kinross.

Briefing information

Background

New supply affordable housing, both council and Registered Social Landlord, is primarily delivered via the Strategic Housing Investment Plan.

This plan sets out investment decisions in each local authority area over a rolling five-year period.

To support this, the Scottish Government provide a yearly grant allocation, known as a Resource Planning Assumption (RPA). The RPA, which was £16,692,000 in Perth and Kinross for 2025/26, covers one year, and any monies unspent at the end of the financial year, are returned to Scottish Government.

Scottish Government Funding

A principle aim of managing the delivery of affordable housing is ensuring that all of the RPA is spent and where possible, additional funding over and above the RPA is awarded to the programme to maximise the delivery of affordable housing. The total amount given to Perth and Kinross at the end of the financial year 2025/26 by the Scottish Government for the new supply programme was £21,752,065.50.

This is £5,060,065.50, or 30%, over the original allocation of £16,692,000. This is a significant additional allocation and a successful year in terms of the coordination and spend of the funding available.

Completions

Successful management of the funding means the purchase and development of properties to meet current housing need and demand. The current Local Housing Strategy target for delivery of affordable housing per year is 210, and the table below sets out the affordable housing completions in Perth and Kinross for 2025/26.

Beyond the headline completion target for new supply affordable housing, the LHS sets out other targets related to the type of affordable housing that is being delivered.

Work is ongoing to enhance the delivery of MMR in Perth and Kinross to ensure that LHS targets are met in future. The table below sets out new supply homes by ward area:

Future delivery

The table below sets out the current expected delivery of affordable housing for 2026/27 based on information known at this point:

To deliver a successful programme beyond 2026/27, there needs to be enough site starts to enable the completions to follow on thereafter. The table below sets out the number of anticipated site starts within the year 2026/27 based on current information. This does not include buybacks or open market purchases as these are unknown at this point but historically have always occurred to increase numbers.

It should however be noted that the programme is over-provisioned to allow for slippage and so it is to be expected that some of these units may stall and move into 2027/28. Even allowing for some slippage though, the current 2026/27 programme seeks to spend to full allocation of £16,998,000 and, if possible, claim more.

The Scottish Government has committed to multi-year funding allocations, after a period of one year funding settlements, and these have been set out below:

Community Led Rural Housing

Community-Led Housing is affordable housing that is primarily funded via Scottish Government's Rural & Islands Housing Fund, which is a discrete fund though it complements the AHSP/SHIP fund. PKC supports rural specialist housing enabler Communities Housing Trust (CHT), who work with local Community Development Trusts (CDT) to provide a range of affordable housing to meet local needs and demand. CHT has undertaken six localised Housing Needs Assessments (HNAs) since 2022 and worked with the relevant CDTs to develop affordable housing plans appropriate to their areas. In 2026/27, the following Community-Led Housing projects began to take shape: