Scottish government announces extra £20m to speed up building safety remediation work

The Scottish government has announced a further £20m to speed up the removal of dangerous cladding from high-rise residential blocks.

Housing secretary Màiri McAllan has announced that cash under the Single Open Call fund will be doubled to £20m this year, while a further £10m will be made available to prioritise immediate building safety mitigations for buildings most at risk.

The Single Open Call fund launched in March and allows owners and residents to apply for a Scottish Government-funded, holistic ‘single building assessment’ to determine the work required to make buildings safe. It will also fund work identified through the assessment.

In an update to its Cladding Remediation Programme today, the Scottish government said the extra funding “will ensure that every eligible application submitted by 31 December 2025 can move forward without delay”.

It confirmed equal access to the funding for social landlords.

It said: “Funding will be made available on an equitable basis to support both private sector residential properties and social housing. This ensures that all eligible buildings, regardless of ownership or tenure, can access the support necessary to assess, initially mitigate and remediate cladding-related risks.”

McAllan said: “I am determined that by 2029, every high-risk residential building over 18 metres identified with unsafe cladding will have been resolved — whether made safe, decommissioned or replaced — and that every building between 11 and 18 metres will be on a defined pathway to resolution — supported by robust assessment, planning and funding for essential cladding remediation.”

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Meanwhile, the Scottish government also this week revealed the details of a £4m fund for homelessness prevention projects.

Managed by Advice Direct Scotland, the fund will support organisations to pilot new ‘ask and act’ measures. These duties, as part of the Housing (Scotland) Bill currently being considered by the Scottish Parliament, will require bodies such as health boards, the police and prison service to take reasonable steps to prevent homelessness.