John Swinney said he wants to deliver sustained investment for housing in Glasgow from the Scottish Government.

Speaking exclusively to the Glasgow Times, during a visit to Drumchapel, the First Minister said he wants to be pragmatic in the short term and hopes there will be resources available for long-term investment.

Glasgow City Council declared a housing emergency a year ago and is dealing with a rapid rise in homelessness.

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Swinney said that more can be done with existing stock as well as the need to build houses.

The Glasgow Times asked him what the people of the city can expect when the budget is set particularly for housing.

He said: “The government's budget will involve sustained investment in housing.

“We've got a housing emergency, so I want us to do essentially two things in our approach to housing.

“One is, I want us to be very pragmatic in the short term about how we can help to improve the available housing stock.

“So for example, if we put more money into housing adaptations so that somebody can stay in a house for longer just simply because we make the house a bit more suitable for them.

“Or if we put money into supporting local authorities to reduce the amount of time that properties are void that can help to get housing stock activated and more housing stock to be available.

“Those are some of the pragmatic decisions that I want us to look at to see what the possibilities are.”

The Glasgow Strategic Housing Investment Programme has a price tag of £1.1bn attached.

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While the First Minister did not commit to that investment being available, he hoped for more certainty from this UK Government than with the last to allow investment.

He said last year the Scottish Government faced an “abrupt” cut which affected housing.

The Scottish Government then cut the housing budget by almost £200m.

Swinney said: “Essentially, we got a 63% cut in the financial transactions. That's basically the money we were using for housing.

“Now we've got a bit of an uplift in that for the forthcoming period, so what I hope is that with the benefit of that and with a bit more certainty from the UK Government and the spending review in the spring, we can give a lot more clear line of sight about how we can invest in housing and a sustained basis.”

Following the UK Chancellor’s Budget last month which promised an extra £3.4bn in Barnett Consequential for Scotland the First Minister said it mainly deals with inflation and pay claims and there will still be “difficult decisions”, which usually means cuts.

He said: “The additional resources this year is largely what we expected. It's the knock-on effect of pay claims.

“That gets baselined for next year, so we don't have to find that again for next year and then there's an uplift for 2025/26, which is in the order of £1.6 billion.

“Which of course is dealing with the effect of inflation, so your budgets always got to go up to deal with inflation or you've got real terms cuts in public spending.”

He explained the impact on next year's budget to be set by Finance Secretary, Shona Robison, in the coming months.

Swinney said: “So, you've got a combination of the effects of inflation, pay demands, rising demand because demand is rising for services and a whole host of different areas, it's not just in the health service.

“We've got rising demand within education, particularly for special needs education. “You've got the challenges that people are facing in their lives and wrestling with poverty and disadvantage, so all of that builds accumulative pressure that we've got to try and address.

“It is still going to involve us with difficulties. There will still be difficult decisions.”

The First Minister, was campaigning in Glasgow ahead of three council by elections.

He said: “I've come into office to make sure the government is focused absolutely on life as people find it and the circumstances that they are dealing with.

“And I want to make sure that the resources that we have available to us are used as effectively as we can to address those priorities of eradicating child poverty, strengthening the economy, improvement in public services and making the transition to net zero and folk will feel that in the budget and they will feel a relentless focus on delivering against that for the next 18 months.”