CIOB supports the Scottish Government’s ambition to increase the pace and scale of housing delivery. We recognise the urgency of Scotland’s housing challenges and welcome the focus on identifying measures that may help to accelerate development.

However, while some of the levers proposed in this consultation may have merit and contribute to improvements in particular circumstances, we are concerned that the consultation’s overall approach is too narrowly focused on individual interventions intended to influence build-out rates. In our view, this does not sufficiently engage with the more fundamental and systemic barriers affecting housing delivery in practice.

CIOB therefore considers that any serious effort to accelerate housing delivery must be accompanied by strategic, system-level reform. There is a need not only to consider how individual sites could be progressed more quickly, but also how the overall system for enabling and delivering housing can be made more coherent, more coordinated, and less risky for those expected to deliver homes.