Below is the challenge set out in a speech by MAKAR CEO Neil Edgar, delivered to rural housing leaders in Dundee this week at the Scottish Rural and Islands Housing Association Conference.
For a short summary, listen to the BBC Highlands and Islands news bulletin, from October 9th on the challenge put forward: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0pftysl
Presentation notes, from the provocation given by MAKAR CEO Neil Edgar
“Scotland doesn’t have a housing emergency.
Because if this were genuinely being treated as an emergency, our guys would be on overtime.
We’d be running night shifts.
Our factory would be bursting.
Our yard would be full of homes ready to go.
It isn’t.
Since the Scottish Government declared a National Housing Emergency in May 2024, we could have built around 60 homes.
How many affordable homes have we actually delivered into that emergency?
One.
And we commissioned that ourselves.
So in our case, the constraint isn’t skills, materials or manufacturing capacity.
And it certainly isn’t a lack of need.
What Scotland actually has is a housing delivery emergency.
Delivery.
That is the failure — not demand.
And an emergency isn’t defined by what we call it.
It’s defined by how we respond.
What does an emergency response look like?
And we all know what an emergency response looks like.
We lived through one.
During Covid, life changed overnight. No work. No hugs.
And a distinct lack of toilet roll…
The point isn’t whether every decision was right or wrong.
The point is that when government treated something as an emergency, everything changed.
So, what has changed quickly enough on the ground since government declared this one?
Affordable housing delivery has reached a ten-year low.
At the same time, we’re losing builders, contractors and manufacturers.
And major housebuilders delivering hundreds of homes are not a substitute for rural capacity.
They won’t give a second thought to a pair of semis on Lismore.
Rural Scotland needs businesses willing to deliver two homes here, four there, six somewhere else.
That capacity isn’t peripheral - it’s absolutely essential.
Business as usual
But the system simply isn’t set up for them.
It is set up for Business As Usual.
Take one real project.
Four local-authority homes.
Planning and Building Warrant in place.
We counted the hours spent trying to get the contractual element over the line and is still not completed.
In those same working hours, we could have manufactured and delivered two of the homes.
On another project, 598 days passed before the build started.
Our manufacture, delivery and assembly will take 32 days.
Ninety-five per cent process.
Five per cent physical build.
I’m afraid the urgency has disappeared into process – for the sake of process.
And if Business As Usual could solve the National Housing Emergency, then we surely wouldn’t have one in the first place.
We have understood urgency before
We have understood urgency before.
In 1944, before the war had even ended, government recognised that conventional construction simply could not deliver homes quickly enough. They didn’t ask everyone to work faster or longer…
They changed the system.
Factory manufacture.
Standardised designs.
More than 32,000 temporary homes were ultimately delivered in Scotland through that plan.
My gran and grampa got their new council house in Cumnock.
They were so desperate to move in, they took it without a kitchen — which my grampa built himself from old tea crates.
He painted it every year.
And when he died sixty years later, it was still the only kitchen that house ever had.
They didn’t need another pilot project.
They didn’t need another viability report.
They needed a home.
I’m not suggesting we recreate the prefabs.
I am suggesting we rediscover the urgency that delivered them.
Build Better Homes
Today, we can do infinitely better.
We have Scottish timber, Scottish skills, local trades and local supply chains.
We can build permanent, high-performance, very-low-energy homes quickly and repeatedly.
What we build, and what we build it from, matters.
But above all, homes must be affordable to live in — not simply affordable to build.
Because the cheapest fuel you will ever buy is the fuel you do not need.
Eradicate fuel poverty at source
Between October and Christmas, 820,000 Scottish households — nearly one in three — are expected to be in fuel poverty.
In social housing, it’s 55%.
More than half.
If somebody can afford the rent but cannot afford to heat the home, what exactly have we made affordable?
We should be designing fuel poverty out at source — building warm, healthy homes that need dramatically less energy.
Awaab’s Law has just come into force.
Quite rightly, it protects people when homes fail.
Our greater ambition should be to build new homes where that intervention simply isn’t needed.
Design the problem out.
Build better from the beginning.
What did that Scottish Pound do?
And when Scotland spends public money building those homes, we should ask more than:
“What did that house cost?”
We should ask:
“What did that Scottish pound do for Scotland?”
Did it support Scottish forestry, manufacturing, local trades, jobs and apprenticeships?
Did it reduce energy demand and improve health?
How much of that pound it went round the Scottish economy again?
Housing investment can solve more than one problem with the very same pound.
And in rural Scotland, housing is also infrastructure for nature recovery.
But only if we can do it at scale.
Repeat what works.
Refine it — don’t reinvent it.
Once something is proven, stop re-proving it project by project.
And that is why I welcome the ambition behind More Homes Scotland.
The test is what will ACTUALLY change in reality.
Simplicity.
Spend the money on improving the homes — not repeating the process.
Speed.
Agreed sites. Committed funding. Clear delivery dates. A named lead.
Simplified processes — not reduced standards.
Scale.
A dependable programme of rural homes, with smaller manufacturers and community builders involved from the very start.
Leadership and the challenge
We already know how to build better homes.
What we need now is the urgency and ability to deliver them.
So I’ll leave you with one final thought.
We currently have two Paradigm homes built as stock in our yard.
No customer.
No contract.
We simply decided to build them.
Two highly energy-efficient, healthy homes ready for families and communities who desperately need them.
So, if Scotland genuinely has a housing emergency, I would imagine somebody in this room will find a home for those two houses before I even get back to my seat.
And if they remain sitting in our yard without a client’s name on them, perhaps I was right at the beginning.
We don’t have a housing emergency.
We have a housing delivery emergency.
We can build the homes.
The need is absolutely there.
We must NOW connect the two - DIRECTLY and Urgently.
Thank you.”