Seòmar agus comataidhean

We have begun the SBA delivery process for 15 buildings using our grant based approach, with an additional 29 contacted to offer directly commissioned assessments.

25 of the 29 buildings we have contacted are from the 80 block 2021 Expressions of Interest group. Once we ascertain consent and key details, we will move to the contracting process.

We have regular ongoing discussion with the Welsh Government on matters relating to cladding remediation, including the recently launched buy-out scheme.

There is preliminary work underway to create a feasible Scottish scheme that works for Scottish homeowners and the Scottish tenure system.

Since announcing the move to direct procurement for Single Building Assessments, we have tendered for and completed commissioning of an initial test and are using the learning from this to plan the scaling up of the additional surveys announced on 12 May 2022. The initial test procurement now has a fire engineer on site delivering the SBA. We expect costs to range between £20,000 and £100,000 in the first wave of buildings using our direct procurement approach.

Officials have engaged in conversations with a number of suppliers to look into the utilisation of digital twin surveys to enable assessment and assurance.

Starting from Autumn 2023, the Fund will be subject to annual reviews which will consider to what extent the Fund is meeting its aims, in particular, in assisting households who are unable to access self-build finance. The reviews will also consider if adjustments should be made to the Fund to ensure it continues to meet these aims.

At the end of June 2022, the Self Build Loan Fund administrators, Communities Housing Trust (CHT) had approved 40 loans to successful applicants committing £6.02 million over 13 local authority areas. The average loan offered to borrowers was £150,000.

Of the 40 homes funded through the national Self-Build Loan Fund since 2018, 37 are located in a rural area according to 6-fold urban rural classification. In addition, over one third of all approved loans (14), with committed funding of almost £2.3 million has been made available to people living in the islands. Five of these borrowers have also benefitted from a Croft House Grant.

The number of Self Build Loan Fund loans and value of these loans issued by year of operation is shown in table 1.

Table 1: Number and Value of Self Build Loan Fund loans by year of operation

Recognising that standard bank lending is often not available to support self-build projects, the Scottish Government acts as lender of last resort through the Self Build Loan Fund, supporting successful applicants to build their own home through short-term funding, normally around one year to 18 months. Up to £175,000 is available to eligible borrowers to assist with construction and professional fees costs resulting from their self-build project. The loan is intended to bridge the gap in construction funding and must be repaid in full once building is complete either from mainstream mortgage finance or from equity from the sale of the home.

The Scottish Government has not prepared a comparison between the Self Build Loan Fund and the UK Government’s Help to Build Scheme, which operates on different terms and administrative arrangements and is a matter for the UK Government.