Wednesday May 20th 2026
Glasgow City Chambers
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Drew Sandelands
Council funding could be awarded to key housing projects in Glasgow as options to speed up the delivery of new homes are considered.
A draft blueprint for the regeneration and development of the city over the next decade includes plans for over 30,000 homes.
Glasgow City Council declared a housing emergency more than two years ago due to rising pressure on homelessness services.
But high interest rates and “huge inflation” in the cost of materials and labour have hampered the construction of more homes, Cllr Ruairi Kelly, the city’s housing convener, said.
If Glasgow “had 30,000 homes yesterday”, it could “probably fill most of them”, he added. “I will be doing everything I can to get as many of those homes delivered as possible.”
Meeting the housing demand over the short-term is “not realistic”, the SNP councillor said, as the “problem has been 40 years in the making”.
“It is going to take quite a time to build the volume of houses that’s required. That’s with us meeting targets, as opposed to what’s happening more recently with the downturn in housing delivery.”
In the draft plan, a deliverable housing land pipeline includes more than 6,300 homes in the next three years. Nearly 13,600 are planned in four to six years, with over 11,500 in the final years of the decade-long blueprint.
The housing convener said there is a “huge need” for social housing to deal with the homelessness crisis. Roughly, 11,000 of the 30,000 are set to be affordable homes.
But other types of tenure are required too — like larger family homes and properties for first-time buyers.
“We don’t want to have a situation where once you are no longer a student or a young professional, and you’re looking to start a family, you move outside of the city,” Cllr Kelly said.
“We need to retain that council tax base but we also want to have a really good mix of demographics and people throughout the city.”
The council is looking at how it can support financing projects. “It’s not that complicated,” Cllr Kelly added. “If it costs more to build a house than someone can sell it for or lease it for, it won’t get built. Unless there is some sort of public support or subsidy, or we can reduce the input costs.
“Everything has spiked at one time and it’s not feasible that you can just charge all of that extra, because people can’t afford either the rent or the mortgages.”
One option could be a growth fund to offer lower interest lending while the council could also “put money into strategic projects that will then deliver an increase in council tax”.
Cllr Kelly said if council funding helped to get 400 flats over the line, then the council tax return off those properties could be “payback for the investment”.
Glasgow is looking at “innovative ways that public finances can help support the delivery of housing across the piece”, he added.
“Whether that’s through increased social and affordable housing or whether it’s through supporting the private sector delivery. If we’ve got a private sector that is going gangbusters, that’s more jobs, it’s more economic activity.”
He also wants to explore ways to shorten the timeframe between applications being received and construction starting, so “every hour our planning team is spending going through applications is furthering the delivery of housing as much as it can”.
A council official said staff have to “take on any application that comes in”, but “a lot of applicants” seek pre-application engagement which can flush out “sites that are very difficult potentially or have a lot of issues”.
More than half of Glasgow’s population live within 500 metres of a derelict site, the draft plan states. Cllr Kelly said: “In some parts of the city, it will be much higher than that.
“Across that northern corridor, from Drumchapel to Easterhouse, where you had a lot of house clearances whenever old stock was knocked down, or old industrial sites that have been cleared.”
A major issue with vacant land is the need for remediation work. The city’s housing convener wants to see more funding from the Scottish Government to clean up these sites, which can then be used by social landlords or taken to the market.
“At the minute, you have got lots of land that essentially has a negative value because it costs more to get rid of whatever has been buried in the ground than what it would be worth to develop out,” Cllr Kelly said.
“That has a major impact, particularly in areas of higher deprivation as well,” he added, with studies showing it can impact health and educational outcomes as well making areas more attractive for fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour.
Residents will be able to have their say on the latest city development plan later this year, when a public consultation is held.
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