Scotland’s housing agency has launched a three-year plan to build 21,500 affordable homes. The scheme, Communities Scotland, promises to invest £1.2 billion until 2008 to build the homes for social rent and low-cost home ownership. The houses will be a mix of new build and refurbished housing stock. This is an increase on the £750 million invested in 16,500 affordable units over the previous three years. The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) in Scotland said it was concerned that the targets failed to take into account the likely increase in demand when key homelessness legislation comes into force in 2012. A spokesman said: "Quite a lot of households claiming housing at the moment are turned down, but the act will remove the barriers to claiming, so every household will be able to claim. Looking forward to 2012, it's clear that we've got to start building now because it takes a while for new housing to come on stream." (Guardian)