SFHA at Scottish Labour Conference

External Affairs Co-ordinator Tom Ockendon reflects on Scottish Labour conference.

Last Friday the SFHA team were busy at Scottish Labour conference, either hosting, attending, or speaking at events throughout the day. There was a good buzz about the venue as the party is starting to kick into election mode ahead of Anas Sarwar’s bid to become First Minister in 2026. 

Sally Thomas attended the Business Leaders Day, a full-day event aimed at chief executives which covered a range of policy discussions focused on economic priorities. As part of that, we co-hosted a roundtable with Homes for Scotland. The discussion focused on how we can deliver the affordable and social homes we need at scale and how the planning system can best help this. We were joined at the roundtable by Mark Griffin MSP, Scottish Labour Spokesperson on Housing, and Paul O’Kane MSP, Spokesperson for Social Justice, Social Security and Equalities, who helped facilitate. 

Other important sessions included panels on energy and net zero as well as how to deliver economic growth. After his headline speech to a packed-out hall, Anas Sarwar took part in a Q&A session with business leaders. We were glad to hear the Labour leader mention in his conference speech the importance of building more social homes across the country and use some of our lines on the state of building right now.  

We also co-hosted a fringe event with Shelter on what needs to be done to tackle the housing emergency. The session, chaired by Pam Duncan-Glancy MSP, was well attended and was a good opportunity to highlight our National Housing Emergency Action Plan, produced as part of a broad coalition. Sally spoke alongside Alison Watson of Shelter and Mark Griffin, and there was a positive consensus that the priority to end the emergency was building the social homes we need. 

To wrap up the day, Carolyn Lochhead represented SFHA and our members on a New Statesman fringe on Scotland’s housing shortage. The session was hosted by Chris Deerin, Scotland Editor of the political magazine, and Carolyn spoke alongside Dr John Boyle of Rettie, Gary Smith of Hallam Land, and Martin Whitfield MSP. There was a good range of views represented on the panel and a constructive conversation with topics raised including the planning system, data on housing, building a political consensus on housing, and how to finance the building of social homes. 

As always, we continue our political engagement throughout the year but use party conferences as an opportunity to raise awareness of the work our members do across the country and the support our sector will need from any future Scottish Government. We’ll continue to update members on political work as we move towards the Holyrood elections in 2026.