Council Housing

Chris Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

I want to offer a Scottish perspective on the subject. In May 2024, the Scottish Parliament declared a national housing emergency. That was a significant admission, but declaring an emergency is not the same as resolving one. More than two years later, the figures make uncomfortable reading.

Across Scotland, more than 10,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. That is the highest number on record. There are almost 35,000 open homelessness cases, which is also a record high. Last year, there were more than 21,000 recorded instances in which local authorities failed to offer temporary accommodation to households entitled to it, an increase of almost a third.

Those figures come from the Scottish Government’s own statistics, a couple more of which came out just this morning. The “Housing Statistics for Scotland” report found that house building has fallen by 8% in the last year and we have more than 10,000 council houses sitting vacant, often as a result of lack of funds or people to bring them back into use.

Housing is a constant feature of my constituency casework. We hear from families in overcrowded homes and people living in unsuitable accommodation. Most express a lack of confidence that they will ever find somewhere appropriate to live. As a former council leader, I know that providing good council housing takes more than ambition; it takes resources and power, something that this Labour Government are looking to devolve to local communities in England. However, in Scotland, the SNP is centralising rather than devolving powers.

I have seen what can be achieved when these things come together because Stirling has been ranked first in the UK for roof-top solar installations relative to households. Our long-running programme of installing solar panels on council houses contributed significantly to that achievement. Successive council administrations invested in improving housing stock, helping tenants with energy costs and delivering environmental benefits.

I also want to highlight the importance of housing to rural economies. Stirling council has recently allocated UK Government funding to new houses in Tyndrum at the northern end of my constituency. Local tourism businesses tell me they struggle to recruit staff because prospective employees cannot find affordable accommodation. If a hotel or restaurant cannot recruit because workers have nowhere to live, housing becomes an economic as well as a social issue. In small rural communities, even a handful of new, affordable homes can make an enormous difference, but much more needs to be done.

I welcome the UK Government’s commitment to increasing council and social house building in England. We must share lessons from across the United Kingdom because devolution should never mean that we stop learning from one another. Ultimately, the test of housing policy is not how many targets we announce, strategies we publish or emergencies we declare, but how many families finally receive the keys to a safe, secure and affordable home. For far too many of my constituents, that day still feels too distant.

To conclude with a bit of history, it pains me to admit that Scotland’s first pioneering council housing development was in Dundee, rather than in my constituency of Stirling and Strathallan, but I was fascinated to discover that, even before the Stirling houses were occupied in May 1920, the Commons was debating their affordability. In April 1920, Labour MP Alexander Wilkie questioned the Secretary of State for Scotland about rents that threatened to price out the very working people the homes were intended to help. More than a century later, we are still grappling with that same fundamental challenge of providing good homes that people can afford.