Scottish budget: Shona Robison says the government's housing targets are still 'important', despite slashing the budget

Finance Secretary Shona Robison cut more than £200 million from the housing budget

Finance Secretary Shona Robison says the Scottish Government’s affordable housing target is still “important”, despite cutting more than £200 million from the housing budget.

Ms Robison also confirmed there will be public sector job losses, although added she is determined to avoid any compulsory redundancies.

The finance secretary set out the 2024/25 budget on Tuesday 19 December, including a new income tax band for those earning between £75,000 and £125,140 and providing £144m to fund the council tax freeze.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison unveils the 2024/25 Scottish budget. Image: Andrew Milligan/Press Association.

But her budget also included cutting the housing budget from £738.m to £533.2m, and cutting the housebuilding budget by £188.8m.

Now Ms Robison says meeting the target of building 110,000 new affordable homes by 2032 was still “important” to the government.

Speaking on BBC Good Morning Scotland, she said: “We have a very good track record on delivering affordable homes, we have built nearly 20,000 since coming to power, and building 110,000 by 2032 is an important target.

“A 10 per cent cut to our capital budget over the next five years is having an impact on our capital programmes.

“What we had to prioritise next year was our legal and contractual commitments, things that were already in train.

“What we’re doing, and the work we’re doing with the housing minister, is to look at how we can lever in innovative finance.

“Work is well advanced on that to make sure that working with private sector organisations we can lever in additional finance because we recognise that affordable housing is a key anti-poverty measure and we want to be able to deliver on our commitments, but we’ll have to do that in a different way.”

She added the government needed to prioritise its “practical and legal commitments” in housebuilding in this budget.

Ms Robison also confirmed there will be job losses in the public sector on the back of this budget.

She said: “I have said clearly the size and shape of the public sector has to change.

“In order to make sure there is a clear policy of no redundancies, we will work on a fair, transparent plan to make sure public bodies are more efficiently supported going forward so we have a sustainable set of public services we can afford.”

In her budget Ms Robison announced councils will receive £144m to fully-fund the council freeze tax.

However this has been condemned by Cosla, the umbrella body for Scotland’s 32 councils, who says the reality is this is a cut of £251m for local government.

The total funding settlement for local government was £13.2 billion.

Ms Robison defended the funding awarded to councils in her budget, and said: “They are getting an increasing share of the overall budget, something they have asked for.

“Of course on capital, yes capital is difficult - we’ve got a 10 per cent cut to our capital budget over the next five years, so nowhere in the public sector can be immune from the impact of that capital budget reduction that we are having to manage.”

She added the local government settlement was “not a bad offer”.