Fife Council underspends housing budget by £9m despite declaring housing emergency

Fife Council underspent its housing budget by almost £9 million this year despite being in the midst of a housing emergency.

According to the latest figures from Eileen Rowand, Fife’s Executive Director of finance, the affordable housing programme is underspent by nearly £5.5m, and the council’s buy-back – or Property Acquisition Programme – underspent by £3.5m.

Ms Rowand’s Cabinet committee report blamed the affordable housing underspends on “unforeseen delays” at some sites, with spending “slipping into future years”.

Buy-back programme slippage will likewise be rolled over into the upcoming year.

However, SNP housing spokesperson Brian Goodall, Rosyth, criticised the Labour administration for a “lack of urgency” despite declaring a housing emergency last year and called the consecutive underspends a bad look for the council.

“It’s not the £30m underspend we were seeing last year, but £9m is still a high number in a housing emergency.

“I welcome the commitment that the money will be spent in future years, but the simple reality is that we’re wanting to demonstrate our ability to deliver,” he said at the last Cabinet Committee meeting.

After the meeting, he added: “Unfortunately, the administration, although they declared a housing emergency, don’t seem to be backing that up with any sense of urgency.

“And the fact that there was a £30m underspend on the affordable housing budget last year, and then a £9m underspend this year sort of backs up that thought.”

John Mills, Fife’s head of Housing Services, confirmed that there has once again been slippage, but emphasised that there has been a “significant improvement” from last year’s £30m figure.

“The slippage is within our normal range over the last few years, with the exception of 2023/24,” Mr Mills said.

“The slippage is not lost and will be rolled forward. It doesn’t affect the level of subsidy the council received from the Scottish Government.”

Mr Mills also assured Fife councillors that this year’s figures include the use of an additional £1.8m to assist with council buy-backs from the open market.

“We have achieved this spend and are achieving a 93% spend on the overall HRA Capital Programme,” he said.

“The element of the slippage for property acquisitions is to support a further tranche of acquisitions 2025/26.”

Cllr Goodall gave the housing service a lot of credit for the work they’ve done to get those underspends down this year, and he praised improvements in issues like voids – the amount of time that properties lie empty between tenancies.

However, he still criticised the underspends reported from the council’s housing buy-back programme.

“We have been trying to see efficiency in all elements of housing delivery, but the big issue is with the acquisitions,” Cllr Goodall said.

It is anticipated that Fife Council will have acquired 41 affordable houses through its buy-back program by the end of March.

According to Cllr Goodall, this is below Fife’s target of making at least 50 buy-backs this year.

Fife’s SNP group has long championed the buy-back program as one of the most reliable ways to address the Kingdom’s current housing emergency.

The group has argued that buy-backs can provide affordable housing up to four times faster than building new homes from scratch and is a cheaper alternative to new builds.

However, the Labour Administration has argued that Fife must build its way out of the housing crisis.

“Acquisition has a key role in our housing approach and we are doing that, but as we’ve said time and time again, it does not add one single property to the overall stock,” Council Leader David Ross, Labour, previously said at full council.

“We have to, and your government has said the same, have more houses and we need to build more houses otherwise we will not get out of the housing crisis we are in.”