SURF Response to 2026 Programme for Government

The SURF team has been busily dissecting the recently announced Programme for Government over the last few days to share key messages that are of relevance to community led regeneration.

Public Service Reform

As was to be expected, considerable attention was paid to Public Service Reform, often framed as the Scottish Government’s defining mission over the coming parliament. A whole host of plans were outlined in the PfG, from merging health boards to consolidating environmental bodies into one organisation and embedding Architecture and Design Scotland into More Homes Scotland.

Whether this will lead to efficiencies and cost savings, however, remains up in the air. Already the First Minister has ruled out compulsory redundancies as part of the proposals, so savings will need to come wholly from efficiencies of scale, phasing out duplicate roles and functions, and improvements in delivery. The administrative complexity of this challenge is compounded by the fact that healthcare costs have always trended upwards. Even realised efficiencies could be quickly wiped out by inflationary pressures, an ageing demographic, and emerging health needs.

Rationalising the public policy landscape to improve delivery is more than welcome, but the wider PSR agenda is also framed primarily in relation to cost savings. How these will be generated is of principal interest to SURF, as meeting these targets is the only way of truly ensuring that frontline delivery funding – especially for local communities – can be preserved. Read our latest blog on Prevention and Public Service Reform for more on that.

The planned dialogue between the Scottish Parliament, local government, and other stakeholders around the future of local governance in Scotland will be an interesting forum for gauging wider buy-in to proposed plans. With Democracy Matters very much a ‘live’ issue, but with progress around reform limited over the last decade, this will be a crucial aspect of the Public Service Reform Strategy. Community Empowerment is mentioned as an important element of the PfG, but it will be interesting to see whether these conversations include community representatives and community councillors, for example.

What we know so far about planned reforms is that they seem to move away from localism, with health boards, quangos, and potentially even local authorities merged. How these two opposing principles work in practice will be vital to communities – who are simultaneously promised more influence through the Community Wealth Building and Community Empowerment agendas, while also witnessing this wider political move towards the consolidation and further centralising of key services and assets.

The PfG also lists collaborations between the Ayrshire councils, as well as Falkirk, Stirling, and Clackmannanshire as particularly promising, which might suggest this is where local authority mergers could start.

Community Wealth Building and Regeneration

Both Community Wealth Building and Regeneration were mentioned as key to unlocking the potential of local areas in Scotland. Digital connectivity was highlighted in particular, which was a key ask in our 2026 Manifesto. On regeneration in particular, the PfG states:

“Continue to take a strategic approach to regeneration, revitalising town centres and encouraging town centre living, addressing the blight of vacant and derelict land and supporting community ownership.”

These are all vital and SURF looks forward to seeing this commitment resourced adequately in the next budget. There is also a commitment to take forward actions in the Community Wealth Building Act but – given the widespread nature of this work – it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Buses

The most eye-catching policy relating to buses – and transport more broadly – is the £2 bus fare cap in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. A key ask in the SURF manifesto, this is an encouraging start – but it remains a pilot with a nationwide rollout yet to be announced. In practice, this will mean many rural areas will continue to face high costs for buses, an issue compounded by the fact that a large proportion will likely not have access to rail links, which means much of the population – especially those who face deprivation and transport poverty – will now fall through the cracks of both the £2 bus fare cap and the off-peak fares policy. This produces a level of inequality that needs to be addressed – as we know that transport poverty is a huge driver of poverty more generally.

Enhancements to local bus and public services are mentioned throughout the PfG – but no detail is as yet provided. SURF does have a concern that a bus fare cap, although useful, may come at a cost, namely to the rollout of more and better services. These two issues should ideally be addressed collectively, as a bus fare cap does not necessarily mean more buses on the road – if anything, it could lead to fewer, especially if operators seek to level out profits elsewhere by reducing investment.

A commitment to engage around Better Buses hopefully means that a price cap will come paired with better services in future. In particular, it would have been encouraging to see more robust steps towards bus franchising or the municipalisation of the bus network in Glasgow, which would have enabled fare caps to sit neatly alongside a more integrated and higher quality bus network.

Housing and Planning

Various reforms of the planning system were mentioned throughout the PfG, which SURF looks forward to seeing in more detail. Again, this was a policy ask that was included in our Manifesto for Regeneration earlier this year.

There remains significant potential in the More Homes Agency, but further detail remains sparse. A collaboration with SNIB to unlock further investment and leverage more finance into social housing is particularly welcome – and may spark a wider conversation about how, for example, other forms of finance (such as pensions) might be utilised to further housebuilding in future, especially in the social sector.

Planned reform and modernisation of the compulsory purchase system will be one to watch out for as well, with the Scottish Government publishing an update and response to the recent consultation last month. You can read the original SURF response to the consultation from last year here.

It also looks like 10,000 first time buyers will benefit from a new homes fund, with the Scottish Government taking a joint equity stake in the property.

There are a few missed opportunities with such a policy which SURF would have liked to see considered more substantially (and hopefully this can still happen as we await the full policy details):

Ultimately, SURF believes this policy should be means tested or at least targeted to those on lower incomes. Previous iterations of similar schemes in other countries have often shown that such policies usually benefit higher income buyers or those who would likely already have bought a property without the help of the policy. This runs the risk of further entrenching inequality and, counterintuitively, driving up housing prices even more, making home ownership even less achievable for those on lower incomes.
- In particular, it would help to specifically prioritise areas – many of which are rural – where average house prices far exceed the allowable thresholds for the Open Market Shared Equity Scheme. These areas have long been without a working OMSE scheme, and this new first time buyer scheme has significant potential to help address unmet need in those areas.
Implementing safeguards to ensure that houses purchased through the scheme remain in use as residential properties – and not investments. This would mirror similar requirements included in the Open Market Shared Equity Scheme.
As with the Open Market Shared Equity Scheme, SURF would like to see social renters seen as a priority group for a first time buyer scheme, which could help deliver on the spirit of the policy while also freeing up social housing capacity.

Despite there being a commitment in the SNP manifesto to reform the Tenement (Scotland) Act 2004 and Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 by the end of the next parliament, there is no mention of it in this PfG. The same manifesto commitment was made in 2021.

Culture & Communities

A £100 million annual funding settlement for the culture sector means the current levels of funding for Creative Scotland look set to continue. It should be noted that over the recent years there have been sharp increases in culture funding, so this stabilisation is worth noting and perhaps reflects the tighter fiscal situation the Scottish Government finds itself in. While more cultural organisations are being funded many are reporting that funding is a third less than requested. More jam, spread thinner is maybe not wholly desirable.

In terms of sustainable and low-carbon development funding for communities, the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) funding will increase to £15 million after falling during the last budget in 2026. The previous spending review had the CARES Budget at a combined budget of just under £30 million for the duration of the spending period, so this new settlement seems to mark a shift in further investment which is welcome.

Lastly, of interest to SURF and many of its community stakeholders will be the Last Provider Fund that will ‘support the sustainability of the last-remaining shops and pubs in rural and island communities.’ This is both an interesting and welcome idea and will hopefully make it easier for community led initiatives to preserve key assets locally. However, it also says much about the hollowing out of rural and island areas that it is needed in the first place. One does wonder whether such a fund will address the wider socio-economic and demographic challenges that much of these areas face – not to speak of the communities that have already lost their post office, or primary school, or local shop. This remains a wider policy challenge that the Scottish Government must remain focussed on solving.

Nevertheless, if this fund is flexibly and rapidly deployed, it could have a significant impact on areas facing the closure of key assets. It will be interesting as well to see just which services will be included in the fund and, given the interwoven nature of so many services and roles in rural places, how open-minded such a fund will be to other key assets – beyond a pub or a shop – that face closure.