Housing Action Areas (Hansard, 21 July 1986)

§ Mr. Rifkind

In recent months the consideration that I give to draft resolutions declaring housing action areas under the Housing (Scotland) Act 1974 has taken longer than normal.

I have been concered that some local authorities, principally the district councils of Glasgow and Edinburgh, have continued to declare new housing action areas although there are substantial existing demands on their non-housing revenue account allocations and they have no basis for assuming that they could meet new demands in addition for some considerable time. The 31W delay in coming to decisions on individual current draft housing action area resolutions has been caused, in part, by difficulty in obtaining and assessing the costs of proceeding with the development of these areas and in establishing the priority which the local authorities concerned give to each housing action area in relation to other housing action areas in their council's area and to the other demands on the non-HRA block.

I have therefore decided that from today all draft housing action area resolutions submitted to me for consideration should be accompanied by additional information to enable these assessments to be made. A circular letter explaining in detail these proposals will be issued shortly by the Scottish Development Department. I have also agreed today that all the draft resolutions currently with my Department should be cleared.

I hope that these new arrangements will provide local authorities with a framework which will assist them in deciding priorities within the resources available to them on the non-HRA block.