Outcome of Credit Crunch Seminar

The seminar held today in Inverness on tackling the Highland housing crisis during the credit crunch brought together key players from all sectors with an interest in Highland housing issues.

The delegates tackled a wide range of issues aimed at planning, funding and delivering homes to meet the high level of demand. 

There was general optimism about the ability of the Highland economy to deal with the challenges and come out stronger as a result.  A range of initiatives were discussed and it was agreed to work together on the following.

• Bringing forward affordable housing development and using this as a springboard to recovery and to maintain the capacity of the industry;

• Investigating how public sector funds can be better used to support investment in housing land, infrastructure and construction;

• Increasing the flexibility of the Councils approach to planning applications and developer contributions to remove obstacles to development;

• Promoting a shared equity model which allows house buyers to enter the market at an initial low level of investment and deposit;

• Ensuring that the council and its public sector partners offer joined-up support to developers and registered social landlords wishing to take forward Housing developments.

• Continuing to use the Council land bank funds to open up developments.  £6m of funding is immediately available for this purpose.