As new figures were being published yesterday showing that the Scottish Government has yet again failed to meet its election promise of delivering 6,000 socially-rented houses each year, local elected members were having their own debate in Gordon House about affordable housing.

As the Housing Minister yesterday claimed in Holyrood, the government has exceeded its target of building 30,000 affordable homes, Scottish Liberal Democrat housing spokesman Jim Hume MSP highlighted the fact by moving its own goal posts, the SNP has cost thousands of Scottish families a home.

The SNP pledged in its 2011 election manifesto that it would ‘build over 6,000 new socially-rented houses each year’, a total of 30,000 over the course of the current parliamentary session.

The figures published yesterday show they only managed to build 3,900 socially-rented homes last year and that only 3,653 new build homes were completed between April and June 2015, a 22% drop in comparison to the same period last year.

At the Garioch Area Committee in Inverurie yesterday, some SNP members were calling for more land allocation to be provided to increase the amount of affordable housing. Of course this aligns with the demands of bodies lobbying for the private housing sector. In reality, the main obstacles to adequate provision of affordable housing is lack of political will and underfunding of the per-unit subsidy to councils and registered social landlords. I was pleased to see that the officers’ response to the “game-changing” Review of the Scottish Planning System backed this up.

We need our social housing lobbying bodies like the SFHA to look beyond the government spin and keep pushing for improved levels of funding for social rented properties so that housing associations can get back to doing what they were set up to do.