GOVERNMENT CASH announced yesterday for much-needed affordable housing is “totally inadequate” and will leave hundreds of people in Dundee and Angus “languishing on waiting lists.”

Angus Housing Association director Bruce Forbes said the two council areas were facing substantial cuts in funding for this financial year and he accused politicians of completely underestimating the scale of the housing problem.

He also said the Government was so far away from meeting its target of eradicating homelessness by 2012 that it was little more than a “pipe dream.”

Mr Forbes, a member of the Tayside, Grampian and Fife Forum of Housing Associations, slammed the Government’s handling of the entire process and said the fact that he only found out about the funding allocations for Dundee and Angus from the press was “an indictment on just how badly managed the whole thing is at the moment.”

His housing association was already legally committed to around 70 new homes and he would now have to see if their funding for 2008 would enable them to meet those commitments in the current financial year.

A breakdown of the £1.5 billion being made available for new affordable housing showed that Dundee will receive £7.766 million and Angus £3.89 million this year—enough for around 80 and 40 homes respectively.

Communities Minister Stewart Maxwell said the three-year Affordable Housing Investment Programme deal was 19% higher than that of the last three years and would deliver at least 21,500 affordable homes by 2011.

He said, “We need new and improved ways of working to achieve the 2012 target on homelessness, and in doing so, we will ensure that there will be absolutely no compromise on the quality or standards of new social housing.

“I want to reassure the sector that what we’re proposing will not mean the end to small-scale and local providers. Indeed, what matters is an organisation’s ability to meet need and deliver services effectively and efficiently, not its shape or size.”

Mr Maxwell said the present arrangements for subsidising Housing Association Grant—money from the public purse to build affordable houses—will be reformed to deliver better value for money.

The Affordable Housing Investment Programme is allocated mainly to registered social landlords and subsidises, on average, just over two-thirds of the construction costs of each new house.

Mr Forbes said, “Dundee and Angus have had substantial cuts in the first year and it’s totally inadequate. It’s just not enough.”