Housing policy of Scotland

Housing policy in Scotland is basically to remove planning restrictions, allowing developers to build unlimited numbers of ‘executive homes’ in the most profitable (and usually relatively ‘unspoilt’) places. The idea is that this will bring prices down, allowing everyone to ‘move up’, making housing at the bottom end of the market more available and affordable. It is a crazy, lazy, free enterprise friendly policy. It certainly isn’t working around Edinburgh, all that’s happened is that little surrounding villages have become clogged with traffic as they turn into commuter dormitories, while prices continue to rise in the city. Lots of well off people now have a house out of town and a flat in town, which may or may not be let out. The problem isn’t actually housing shortage it’s wealth and income distribution, which the government refuses to address despite now having significant fiscal tools to do so.