{"id":528412,"date":"2026-04-13T11:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/528412\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T11:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:49:10","slug":"scottish-parliament-election-2026-labour-launches-manifesto-as-parties-return-to-the-campaign-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/528412\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Parliament election 2026: Labour launches manifesto as parties return to the campaign trail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/core\/website\/assets\/static\/news\/incident-types\/light-mode\/bbc-verify.bac8ff232a.svg\" alt=\"BBC Verify\" height=\"2.5rem\" width=\"11.6875rem\" draggable=\"false\" class=\"ssrcss-901ql1-ContributorImageComponent e2hr5uu0\"\/>Is the promise to build 125,000 homes a realistic target?published at 11:26 BST<\/p>\n<p>11:26 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-fxb76l-Paragraph e14e9ror4\">By Phil Sim, BBC Scotland political correspondent<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scottish<br \/>\nLabour has set a goal of seeing 125,000 houses built in Scotland over the next<br \/>\nHolyrood term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This<br \/>\ncovers all categories across the public and private sector and works out as<br \/>\n25,000 houses in each year of the parliament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Is<br \/>\nthis a realistic target?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">House<br \/>\nbuilding has fallen, with 17,336 new homes completed in 2025 &#8211; down 13% on the<br \/>\nprevious year &#8211; and 14,999 homes started &#8211; down 6%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Industry<br \/>\nbody Homes for Scotland <a href=\"https:\/\/homesforscotland.com\/new-statistics-confirm-housing-emergency-is-continuing-on-catastrophic-trajectory\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">says, external<\/a> this is part of a \u201csustained downward trend\u201d, which is<br \/>\nbeing exacerbated by \u201ca chronic shortage of effective housing land\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The<br \/>\ngroup said completions could fall to 5,000 per year by 2031 unless urgent<br \/>\naction is taken to reform the planning system and address what it calls the<br \/>\n\u201cland supply crisis\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These<br \/>\nkind of reforms might require changes to the law, which would take time to pass<br \/>\nand then to implement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">So<br \/>\nany party making big promises about house building may have their work cut out<br \/>\nwhen it comes to delivering.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the promise to build 125,000 homes a realistic target?published at 11:26 BST 11:26 BST By Phil Sim,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-528412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}