The impact of data

In my work, questions of how we avoid siloed working and how we connect the dispersed data landscape come up on a regular basis. These are critical issues blocking our ability to be a united sector voice, and as I am sitting at the intersection of policy and communications, considering questions of policy, systems, and connection is the heart of my core tasks with BEFS. So, where are the gaps and where are the solutions, and what are BEFS doing?

The historic and built environment is inherently interconnected with wider national economy and public health questions – composite parts of a living and breathing system of people, places, histories, and aspirations. We cannot achieve our national targets for climate resilience, wellbeing, or a thriving workforce – among many other areas – without full integration of national issues with both the needs and offerings of the existing built environment. This holistic approach underpins our advocacy on behalf of all our Members, and is the default approach and a clear necessity to many of us in the sector. While this understanding of the potential and the impact of holistic thinking is well understood by those working within the built environment, is it clear to people outwith it? What is the role of data in both demonstrating and driving impact? And are we tracking our impact to leverage results?

BEFS is the sector strategic intermediary – our membership is wide and diverse. This is not an accident; our membership is a sector mosaic for whom our advocacy takes a holistic approach, because a joined-up approach is a stronger approach. We often hear and repeat the phrase “strength in numbers”, and this is not just true in terms of sector voices amplifying each other, but also in terms of the literal numbers that tell the story of our sector and our national economy. The impact of data cannot be overstated.

The policy landscape, and the data within it, is vast and the threads connecting various policies and strategies can seem both unintuitive and tangled. BEFS 2026 Manifesto outlines our work and our organisational priorities, representing our Members and the wider sector. It is comprised of both qualitative and quantitative sector data, because while qualitative data tells the story of “why”, quantitative data tells the story of “what”, and good advocacy requires both.

In 2025/26 BEFS has thus far responded to 46 consultations. Like many of our Members, we log our consultation responses on our website for the benefit of our colleagues as well as the general public wishing to gain insight into the sector voice. However, a strong sector that enacts change on a national scale must not create policy archives in silos. How do we track what was said and what was done? When we offer sector expertise in consultation, we must be clear on what is reflected back on the other side of inquiry. We are not doing enough to meet this need at present.

Better data for better outcomes

Datasets which are simultaneously broad and precise tell the story of an issue in a wide context across spatial, temporal, social, and economic dimensions. When we work with data that is collected and analysed holistically, we can begin to uncover the impact of the issue at hand. Examining how traditional buildings in Scotland are understood today by sector practitioners who steward the health of these buildings for the nation illustrates this.

An example – in 2007, the Scottish Government published the Guide for Practitioners 6: Conversion of Traditional Buildings. We saw a highly technical guide that placed an emphasis on preservation – highlighting the value of traditional construction – and offered little-to-no insight to the data landscape. This was understandable in the context of the time, as the very first SHEA (Scotland’s Historic Environment Audit) was published in the same year, having provided the sector and other stakeholders with an invaluable evidence base giving us an indication of the health of Scotland’s historic environment.

In the recently published 2026 edition, we see a move towards emphasising holistic thinking around traditional buildings, acknowledging the inherent interconnectedness between accessibility, conservation, and climate adaptation, for example. It makes clear the connection between place and material. BEFS – on behalf of  all our Members – and alongside sector colleagues, have advocated intensely for this holistic approach to be adopted by the government, and it is welcome to see this beginning to be reflected in national building standards.

The national strategy for the historic environment, Our Past, Our Future, is an example aimed at both practitioners and the wider Scottish public, and throughout it we can see how data translates to impact. The strategy recognises that for our sector to thrive, we must contribute to a thriving society by doing our part for a wellbeing economy, transition to Net Zero and climate resilience, and community empowerment. These priorities were developed in 2023 in response to a rapidly changing world that had outgrown its predecessor strategy, Our Place in Time. A responsive national strategy for the historic environment is not only essential for the sector, but also for Scotland on our journey to meet our wider national targets. The most recent data on how the national picture is looking can be found in Our Past Our Future’s midpoint review, published in September 2026.

How can we better demonstrate our impact?

Being clear on the impact of our work means that we can map out our successes and our gaps, to re-strategise, and to identify both the paths of least resistance, and the paths that simply must be taken to see change.

Given how important it is to evidence impact, I believe that BEFS is particularly well-positioned to illustrate how this can be done in practice. As part of our proactive work to de-mystify and connect the sector and the complex policy and data landscapes, I have developed a policy impact tracker, operating not just as an organisational archive, but as a living tool meant to aid the team in tracking what we’ve said and where we’ve been. It’s an internal tool and operates in tandem with our 2026 Manifesto and is organised according to the Manifesto themes. How organisations manage and track their impact will be particular to their organisational aims, their structure, and team preferences, but it is important that it’s done. For many of us who are navigating the funding landscape, having a bank of organisational memory and data telling the story of both success and needs may prove to be an asset, too.

To begin the process of creating your own archive and tracker, I suggest you consider the following questions:

• What are the core topics that your organisation works with? For us, these are our five Manifesto themes.
• What kind of work do you do that benefits from impact tracking? Do you work with policy, or are you more on the ground?
• How are you measuring impact? Is it qualitative (reviews or mentions, or something else?) or quantitative (numbers of visits, income, etc)?
• Become best friends with Excel, or another medium of your choice.
• Is your resource public or internal? Is your specific impact data of interest and need to the public? Are you working to make internal processes more simple? If it is internal, how will you use your evidence of impact to benefit the sector?
• Most importantly, when you have begun setting up your tool, make a plan for how you will showcase your impact, and link up with other organisations for a stronger voice. If you have been considering joining BEFS as Members or Associates, consider this your sign to do so.

Ultimately, BEFS and our Members know intuitively that what we do is worthwhile; showing up in the right spaces and conversations, being both proactive and responsive.. But in a party-political reality where we are competing with many other national interest organisations for the attention spans of MSPs, making sure that we deliver the whys and the whats with a solid chain of receipts that really resound with party interests and national interests is a question of good science communication.

Impact is a substance that joins the dots, and as a sector we have done the work of connecting, signposting, and advocating many times over. Tracking this work effectively will allow us to continue to be better, and thus contribute to our work to improve places, economies, and lives for people across Scotland. We look forward to working with Members and the wider sector to do so.

Why Net Zero is central to Scotland’s Historic Environment 

Four months into my role as Net Zero Lead at BEFS, one thing has become clear: while “net zero” is a term we hear almost daily, and in many different contexts and perspectives, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about what it means in practice for Scotland’s historic and built environment. 

Having previously worked in the political sphere, I came to understand that the transition to net zero is as much about people as it is about policy and technology. While net zero is often discussed in terms of carbon emissions and targets, the reality is that the transition looks very different across sectors, organisations, and communities. Each faces its own challenges, opportunities, and pace of change. What connects them all is the need to understand human behaviour and to support practical action that works in real-world contexts. 

What drew me to this role is the inextricable relationship between heritage, the built environment, and climate action; one of the most interesting aspects of moving into this sector has been seeing how climate conversations are approached here, particularly within the historic environment. Scotland’s existing buildings are not only central to its cultural identity and traditions, but also play an important role in shaping a more sustainable future. 

On one hand, climate change presents significant challenges for our historic environment. On the other, the historic environment has enormous potential to contribute to Scotland’s net zero ambitions, for example through the reuse, repair, maintenance and adaptation of existing buildings and places.  

There is a real opportunity to bring these conversations together, and this role provides a chance to help explore what that looks like in practice and how we can work collectively to make it happen. 

Alongside reducing emissions, I have always been particularly interested in climate adaptation and resilience. As the impacts of climate change become more visible, finding ways to make our buildings, places and historic sites more resilient is increasingly important.  

Why are we talking about net zero? 

At its simplest, net zero means reducing greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any remaining emissions through removal or sequestration. In Scotland, achieving net zero by 2045 is a national commitment, and every sector has a role to play. 

For the built environment, the challenge is significant. Buildings, primarily new buildings, account for around 20% of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions today, yet discussions about net zero often focus on new development and future technologies rather than the buildings and places that already exist. 

This is where the historic environment has an important role to play. Traditional buildings contain significant embodied carbon – the emissions already invested in extracting materials, transporting them and constructing the building itself. Unlike operational emissions, these emissions have already been spent and cannot be recovered. With around 80% of Scotland’s 2045 building stock already in existence, achieving net zero depends on conserving, repairing and adapting existing ones. Reuse avoids the substantial embodied carbon and waste associated with demolition and reconstruction, making existing buildings an essential part of Scotland’s climate response.

At the same time, there are genuine challenges. Retrofitting older and historic buildings requires careful consideration, specialist knowledge and an understanding of what makes these places significant. 

Why does this role exist? What do we need to achieve as a sector? 

The more people I speak to across the sector, the clearer it becomes that there is a strong consensus: heritage is a valuable and key contributor to net zero delivery! The Net Zero Lead role in BEFS team was co-created, in consultation with BEFS Members and the wider sector, due to a shared understanding that the historic environment sector has to be part of the national conversation around net zero, and that this requires a coordinated and joined up approach, representing a shared voice and message.  

One of my key priorities is helping to articulate that value and ensuring that the expertise within the sector is recognised in wider policy and delivery discussions. 

The sector has many differing views on the best pathways forward, but we can and must identify cross cutting areas of consensus, and share resources, knowledge, and data to identify the most efficient routes to transition. 

Equally important is the need to reflect on past and ongoing challenges. Recognising where the loss of buildings or inappropriate interventions has occurred provides valuable insight, helping to guide future planning. 

What is already happening? Where can we be more joined up? 

The encouraging news is that a huge amount of work is already underway. I have witnessed this firsthand. 

Across the sector, architects, surveyors, planners, conservation specialists, contractors, academics, community organisations, and more are exploring how traditional buildings can contribute to a resilient future. From developing green skills and researching low-carbon materials, to delivering energy efficiency upgrades and community-led regeneration projects, there is no lack of positive action. 

One of my early reflections is that many organisations are grappling with similar questions, often in parallel and whilst there is already an impressive amount of expertise across the sector, there are opportunities to strengthen connections between policymakers, practitioners, researchers and communities. There is also much we can learn from other sectors that have been navigating net zero transitions for longer. I have recently created a mapping output to understand BEFS contribution to net zero. Shorter version available here.

Being more joined up means sharing evidence more effectively, learning from both successes and failures, and developing consistent messages about the role the historic environment can play in achieving Scotland’s climate ambitions. It also means being open about areas where views differ. There will not be a single solution that works everywhere, so recognising and learning from this diversity of experience will be vital. 

At a strategic level, the development of a Route Map to Net Zero for Scotland’s Historic Environment – part of delivering Our Past, Our Future, the national strategy for the historic environment – provides an important opportunity to align activity across the sector and identify where collective effort can have the greatest impact. 

Looking ahead 

Part of the reason I was excited to take on this position is that it connects of some of the most important challenges and opportunities facing both our sector and wider society. For me, it is also about helping people find answers, navigate complex issues and identify practical ways forward.  

My first months have been spent listening, learning and building relationships. I truly have been struck by the depth of knowledge and passion that already exists. 

The challenge now is to connect that expertise, strengthen the evidence base with up-to-date data, and ensure that the historic environment’s contribution to net zero is fully recognised. We can promote net zero not as something being done to the sector, but as something the sector is already helping to deliver. 

Whether you are working on policy, retrofit, conservation – or anything else – achieving net zero will require collaboration across the whole policy landscape and across disciplines, professions and trades; by joining the dots without duplicating efforts, we can ensure that Scotland’s historic environment plays a central role in shaping a sustainable future. 

Please do sign up for the BEFS Bulletin to learn more about the sector’s activity, and reach out to me at oliviae@befs.org.uk if you have insights or questions regarding your own journey to net zero.

The following is the speakers’ presentations summarised for the summer edition of the POWF Newsletter. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter you can do so here.

Mary Boullin: Mixed-use futures

Mary, who has worked in the charity sector around fundraising and operations for 18 years, joined Plunkett UK as Head of Community Business in early 2025. Plunkett UK is a UK-wide charity which supports people in rural areas to set up and run community-owned businesses, in alignment with Plunkett UK’s vision for resilient, thriving and inclusive rural communities.

Plunkett UK provides practical advice, business support, training and policy advocacy. The businesses created are diverse. They include shops, pubs, woodlands, farms and arts venues, all of which provide important and inclusive amenities for communities that generally lack options.

It is a growing sector, with 900 community-owned business created with Plunkett UK support to date. A further 1000 are in planning, 172 of which joined the pipeline in 2025. 98.5% of supported businesses have a survival rate of more than five years.

An estimated 2m people in the UK regularly use community-owned businesses. Not only do they provide vital goods and services to rural places and boost fragile local economies, but many function as multi-service hubs and provide additional social, employment, training and volunteering functions.

Amberley Shop and Café, in a church in a Gloucestershire village, is one example. The church still provides services, and the flexible layout also enables the provision of a community shop and café alongside a social programme including free weekly coffee mornings for elderly and isolated villagers. The Broad Chalke Valley Stores serves similar multi-functional needs in Wiltshire. It is an active church with a shop, post office and café. It serves as a weekly meeting place for multiple social groups including a Men’s Club.

One of the Scottish groups in the Plunkett UK support pipeline is Elie Kirk Community Enterprise Limited, which is also being helped by Development Trusts Association Scotland. The group plans to reopen Elie Kirk in Fife as a community hub with a heritage information space, art gallery and community café. It is currently fundraising towards a community purchase of the building. A video has been produced by the Community Enterprise to provide information on a community share offer.

Dr. DJ Johnston-Smith: Continued ecclesiastical use (Sacred Places, Shared Spaces – Where Faith Meets Community) 

A recent opinion column in the Herald by Katarzyna Kosmala argued that the demolition of churches like Glasgow’s Hillhead Baptist Church is about much more than the loss of stone and stained glass. These buildings are anchors of collective experience. A timeline infographic provides a ‘family tree’ history of the development of churches in Scotland up to the late 20^th century. But this doesn’t capture the full range of places of worship, or tell us about the difficult situation we have in 2026. Scotland is changing rapidly.

Scotland’s Churches Trust estimate that there are around 2800 places of worship in Scotland, at least on paper. Some may have quietly closed and we have yet to learn about them, while new ones may have opened and they can take time to appear on the national radar. The Church of Scotland have the most places of worship with 1189. There are also hundreds of Catholic, Scottish Episcopal, and Baptist churches. There are around 100 other Christian denominations/bodies with one or two buildings each. An estimated 110 places of worship in Scotland are owned by non-Christian groups.

Much was made of the 2022 Scotland’s Census outcome that 51% of the population have no religion. While it is true that this was the first time a majority of people said they had no religion in a national census, it underplays the reality that a very large minority do have a faith. The downward trend in religious affiliation, congregations and service attendance over previous decades has, however, been a root cause of closures of places of worship.

Church closures are not a new phenomenon. The first significant wave of closures took place in the 1970s, and the recession and stagnation at the time exacerbated the existing challenge of drops in congregation numbers and income levels. A national conversation emerged, which saw architects, town planners and conservationists share their concerns about loss of heritage. A 1976 newspaper article on ‘Edinburgh’s Endangered Spires’ profiled these anxieties and illustrated just one area of the internationally significant loss associated with the closures.

In 1978, Magnus Magnusson became the first chair of the Scottish Churches Architectural Heritage Trust (SCAHT), which sought to help minimise closures by assisting congregations with preserving their places of worship and advocating for wider action. In 2012, SCAHT merged with another body to form Scotland’s Churches Trust, which continues to preserve, promote and protect religious built heritage.

Closures continued into the 20^th century, as summarised by a 2019 BEFS report commissioned by the Church of Scotland. The report pointed to rising maintenance costs as another factor accompanying the continual dwindling of congregations and income. The Church of Scotland, and some other owners of multiple places of worship, started to reassess whether they need as many buildings. New models promoted by some theological figures argued that their mission doesn’t need a building, and that faith bodies are not societies for protecting built heritage.

A new period of church owners “releasing assets”, which includes places of worship alongside other buildings and landholdings, continued into the 2020s. Scotland’s Churches Trust estimates there have been 427 closures since 2020. It tracks and maps ongoing closures on its website. The current decade is a historic period of change. Local volunteers carry on as best they can in difficult circumstances and changing operational models, which might look to incorporate a social enterprise café, food bank or cultural event programme to supplement income.

The National Churches Trust House of Good research featured ground-breaking research on the social value of places of worship. It calculated that for every £1 invested in a church building, £16 is generated in social impact. This is unprecedented value for money from public investment. Massive benefits are also thought to derive from tourism to religious buildings, but more research is needed. There is also the incalculable spiritual support and wellbeing that places of worship provide, as evidenced by 15% of funerals in Scotland being held in a Church of Scotland property.

The elephant in the room is, the heritage sector doesn’t like to talk about religion. This can be seen in heritage conference topics, and in funding programmes and organisational constitutions that explicitly exclude religion. Local authorities are not granting civil marriage licenses to some places of worship because they contain religious iconography. Faith bodies have started describing their buildings as ‘networking spaces’ or similar for some audiences such as funding bodies. But these are places of worship, and the ‘worship’ part should not be hidden.

An apt description of the current context was articulated by the architect Sir James Dunbar-Naismith in a public meeting in Edinburgh in 1974: “It used to be the job of the churches to save people. Now it is the job of the people to save churches.”

Euan Leitch: Place-based considerations

SURF is a cross-sector membership network with an overall objective of addressing poverty in Scotland’s most deprived communities. It does not focus on heritage or religion, but its anti-poverty work programmes regularly come into contact with places of worship. This is particularly true of the annual SURF Awards for Best Practice in Community Regeneration, which provides an opportunity for regeneration projects of all sizes to demonstrate value and impact.

There are five SURF Awards categories: community led regeneration; creative regeneration; housing and regeneration; improving Scotland’s places; and removing barriers to employability. Each category has three shortlisted initiatives each year and one winner. Some winning and shortlisted projects that utilise places of worship include the following.

The Y Centre in Perth, profiled on p7 of the 2025 SURF Awards publication. This project transformed a church in central Perth that had lain vacant since 2010 into a youth employability service hub and supported accommodation centre for young people with support needs, including those with experience of the care system and the recently homeless.

POWF Members may not appreciate the scale of the interior refresh, but the building was in very poor condition when purchased by YMCA Tayside in the year 2000, and it has ultimately created a much-needed and highly successful service hub out of an abandoned conservation area building. The project took around 20 years from purchase to solution, which was required to deal with complications and raise funding. This may illustrate that quick turnarounds in reuse projects are not the be all and end all, as considerable time may be required to reach the best outcome.

Another places of worship initiative showcased in the SURF Awards is the conversion of Sanday Kirk on Orkney, profiled on p13 of the 2024 SURF Awards publication. The conversion used Scottish Land Fund support to remove pews and provide a flexible space for community events, markets, concerts and workshops. The building, now owned by Friends of Sanday Kirk, was saved by the project, but the public investment needed highlights the limitations of a commercially viable income-generating model in community hubs that serve a small, rural population.

Other SURF Awards example include Glengate Hall in Kirriemuir, Angus. This is a historic church building that was converted into nine affordable flats, one of which is currently on the market for £65k. St Luke’s in the east end of Glasgow is also a church conversion, into a music venue and gastropub. It has seen notable commercial success appealing to those who visit the nearby Barrowlands for concerts.

Perhaps most relevant to SURF’s deprivation focus is St Paul’s Youth Forum, which provides youth and community services in an area of extreme deprivation in north east Glasgow. The success of this project in changing local lives for the better cannot be understated. Its local services range from community food growing, skills training, active travel, addressing misogynistic and racist attitudes, and operating a busy programme of youth activities, sports sessions and social groups.

Interestingly, the project generates impressive income from selling high-end bicycles to private buyers and reinvesting profits in its local services, including providing free bikes to local young people. One of the main service bases is the main hall of St Paul’s Parish Church in Royston, which remains in Church of Scotland ownership with an active congregation and services.

Wider SURF activities have highlighted the social and economic regeneration value and potential in other places of worship, including Kenmore Kirk in Perthshire, the work of RIG Arts in the former West Kirk in Greenock, and the Glasgow Barons, which uses two historic churches in Govan, Glasgow, for community music programmes and performances.

SURF’s place-based Alliance for Action programme supported church restoration initiatives in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire and Girvan, Ayrshire. The vacant Muckle Kirk in Peterhead has been purchased by a businessman who is collaborating with local community groups to convert the building into a gym for the town centre. There is a community led plan in Girvan to use the town’s South Parish Church as a base for growing tourism, by converting it into a performance space and visitor centre with some tourist accommodation. Both of these initiative have strong potential but require hard work, long-term partnership support and significant funding.

These projects are diverse and may provoke mixed views on refurbishment and alternate use of church buildings, but they all show that vacant places of worship can be reused as hubs for social regeneration that deliver strong local impact. SURF Members do not generally care about religious buildings in themselves, but are very interested in how they can be used address social issues in deprived places. To paraphrase Sir James Dunbar-Naismith’s quote, SURF’s interest is in “saving people, not buildings.”

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This blog is part of the sixth edition of the Places of Worship Forum (POWF) Newsletter which was published on 10 August 2026. The newsletter aims to share the ongoing work of the group. Would you like to receive the next edition of the newsletter? Sign up here. 

The battle for Bute House is over, with a Scottish National Party (SNP) victory with 58 seats, though no overall majority. Reform UK and Scottish Labour tied for second, with 17 seats each. The Greens did very well, with 15. The Lib Dems made gains, giving them 10 seats and the Conservatives lost 19, dropping down to 12 seats.

The headline from all of this is that the SNP remain in power, though they are somewhat diminished, missing out on their aim of securing a majority and with it a mandate for a second referendum (though with the Greens on 15 seats, there is a comfortable pro-independence majority in Holyrood). Elsewhere, the results show that there aren’t really any fringe parties anymore, with each having a sizeable representation, able to influence policy to a greater or lesser degree.

Given this political reality, this article will take a look at what the next 5 years of policy making in Scottish Government could look like in relation to the built and natural environment, looking at the SNP’ s manifesto commitments and how they could be shaped by the other parties in Holyrood.

The Built and Natural Environment under the SNP

The SNP’s manifesto sets out an ambitious agenda for Scotland’s built and natural environment over the next five years, with housing delivery, infrastructure investment and net zero central to its plans for economic growth and social development. Proposals including a £4.9 billion commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes, the creation of a new national housing agency – More Homes Scotland – and increased investment in infrastructure and renewable energy.

Planning reform, regeneration and land reform are also expected to play a major role during the next parliamentary term. Commitments to simplify planning processes, reform Compulsory Purchase Orders and tackle vacant and derelict land point towards a more interventionist approach to delivery. The heritage sector is also referenced, with proposed reforms to tenement law following the Scottish Law Commission’s report on compulsory owners’ associations.

Alongside this, the manifesto reinforces Scotland’s continued push towards net zero through support for renewable energy, clean heat and major infrastructure projects. The Heat in Buildings Bill is set to (finally) be reintroduced to parliament and it seems likely that previous policy areas such as EPC reform and the formation of the Heat and Energy Efficiency Technical Suitability Assessment (HEETSA) will continue.

With the recent announcement of Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP as the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing (an area she started her career in at the Chartered Institute of Housing), the next five years could bring significant opportunities to help shape and deliver Scotland’s housing, infrastructure and sustainability ambitions, though housing delivery was notably absent from the SNP’s first 100 days in office pledge.[1]

However, as the SNP didn’t achieve a majority, the next section will look at how their manifesto ambitions could be tempered by some of the other major parties in Holyrood.

Coalition and compromise?

Without a majority, the SNP will be deciding how they wish to govern over the next five years. They could govern as a minority, making individual deals with relevant parties in order firm up support for their legislative agenda. This has the benefit of not being constrained by a formal arrangement but comes with a great deal of risk too, potentially exposing them to policy gridlock if the opposition parties unite against them. Alternatively, they could enter a deal (formal or informal) with an opposition party, as they did previously with the Greens (Bute House Agreement). This gave the government a firm legislative footing with an agreed upon agenda, as well as a formal pro-independence majority in Holyrood; however, the agreement ended in acrimony in 2024 after significant policy-divergence, with the First Minister at the time, Humza Yousaf saying the agreement has “run its course”.

A future arrangement between the SNP and the Scottish Greens, whether through a formal coalition or a confidence and supply agreement, could have a significant impact on Scotland’s built and natural environment over the next parliamentary term. This is perhaps a likely scenario, given that both parties are pro-independence, and there is considerable policy overlap between the two parties. Nevertheless, as nothing has been settled at this stage, we will turn to look at how Holyrood could reshape the pace, priorities and regulatory environment surrounding the SNP’s built and natural environment policy agenda. With an emphasis on the Greens, we will assess how the major parties’ manifesto commitments align or diverge from what the SNP have committed to delivering.

The housing emergency and the PRS

With the Scottish Government declaring a housing emergency in 2024[2] and housing starts and completions continuing to fall across Scotland[3], housing delivery should be a core component of the next parliament, however; it is also perhaps the clearest example of where the SNP and the Green Party align in principle but differ in emphasis. The SNP manifesto places strong focus on increasing housing supply across multiple tenures, backed by a £4.9 billion affordable housing commitment and the creation of a national housing agency, ‘More Homes Scotland’. The Greens, meanwhile, place greater emphasis on social housing, tenant protections and development standards, with less focus on market housing delivery and private sector investment.

As a result, a strengthened Green influence within government could shift the balance of housing policy further towards social housing delivery, stronger regulation and higher development standards, potentially at the expense of broader tenure diversification or accelerated private sector-led delivery. This may particularly affect large-scale speculative housing development, where additional sustainability, planning and infrastructure requirements could place further pressure on development viability.

Nevertheless, Scottish Labour, Reform UK and Scottish Liberal Democrats were all clear in their manifestos that housing delivery is a priority, with Scottish Labour committing to establishing a housing investment bank, which aligns closely with the SNP’s housing agency announcement. Scottish Liberal Democrats committed to delivering 25,000 homes built each year, and Thomas Kerr MSP, outlined that Reform agrees with Shelter Scotland, that 15,000 new homes a year is what’s needed. Support from any of these parties could help the SNP deliver on its more maximalist housing delivery pledges.

Another factor of the housing emergency is the Private Rented Sector (PRS). An agreement between the SNP and the Greens would see a more interventionist approach in this area. Both parties support rent controls, but the Greens have consistently advocated for a more interventionist approach, including expanded rent caps, longer eviction notice periods and stronger tenant protections. The continuation, or expansion, of rent controls could increase pressure on parts of the PRS, particularly smaller landlords and some institutional investors, at a time when supply constraints already exist in several Scottish cities. Supporters of these measures argue they are necessary to improve affordability and tenant security, while critics warn they could discourage investment and reduce rental supply over time.

Scotland’s land and future development

Planning and land reform is also likely to be a prominent policy area over the next 5 years. While the SNP is already proposing reforms to Compulsory Purchase Orders and targeted planning reform, policies shared by a number of parties in Holyrood, the Scottish Green Party manifesto goes further by prioritising brownfield development, discouraging land hoarding and supporting Compulsory Sale Orders. Combined with a continued land reform agenda and stronger support for community ownership, this could lead to increasingly complex land assembly, valuation and ownership structures across both urban and rural Scotland.

For developers and landowners, this may create greater uncertainty around viability and site acquisition, particularly where new levies, sustainability obligations or land-use restrictions are introduced. At the same time, it could also open the doors to an expansion of community ownership and development opportunities, opening land ownership in Scotland, which is said to have one of the most extreme concentrations of land ownership among developed countries.[4]

The Green Economy

Where several parties are most closely aligned is on decarbonisation and the transition to net zero. The SNP’s support for renewable energy, clean heat and industrial transition aligns strongly with the Greens’ ambition to accelerate building decarbonisation and reduce fossil fuel reliance. In turn this is supported by the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Labour, albeit Labour takes a more balanced when advocating for the future of Scotland’s energy mix with less emphasis on whole-house retrofit strategies. A future agreement between the parties could therefore result in faster movement on measures such as the Heat in Buildings Bill.

Nevertheless, while there’s close alignment between several parties in this area, both Reform UK and the Scottish Conservatives have made clear that there should be a sharp climbdown in net zero-focused policy, with Reform UK’s Scotland manifesto committing to ‘Scrap all SNP Net Zero related targets, subsidies and quangos’. Both parties will use their sizeable representations in Holyrood to frustrate the Government’s agenda on net zero.

Existing assets: Conservation, building safety and standards

Tenement maintenance was front and centre for many parties in regard to their ambitions on protecting Scotland’s existing assets, with the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Labour, and Greens explicitly mentioning supporting reforms to help tenement flat owners organise repairs in their manifestos. Given this level of cross-party consensus – with Graham Simpson MSP (Reform UK) convening the Tenement Maintenance Working Group in Parliament – it is hoped action can be taken during the lifetime of this parliament.

Elsewhere, the SNP and a number of other parties emphasised combining regulatory reform with targeted intervention, particularly around building safety and housing quality. The Greens’ manifesto stands out for its emphasis on stronger regulation, including the creation of a demolition levy^[5], infrastructure levies and wider property tax reform, policies which could influence development behaviour by encouraging retrofit, reuse and circular economy approach over demolition-led redevelopment.

Prioritising skills

Skills and workforce policy is one area where there is significant opportunity for alignment across many parties in Holyrood, with most parties recognising the need to address skills shortages and support workforce development, particularly in construction and green jobs. All parties, bar the Scottish Conservatives and Reform UK, link skills policy to the net zero transition, with the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Labour specifically mentioning the construction sector. The Conservatives and Reform focus on broader education reform and addressing labour shortages, with a distinct focus on apprenticeships and adult re-skilling. We await further detail on the SNP’s national skills plan, which will hopefully have the built and natural environment as one of its central pillars.

Ultimately, the shape of Scotland’s built and natural environment over the next five years will depend not only on the SNP’s manifesto commitments, but on the political compromises required to govern without a majority. Housing delivery, planning reform, net zero, land reform and workforce development are all areas where there is varying degrees of alignment, and tension, across Holyrood.

A closer relationship with the Greens could accelerate policy on decarbonisation, retrofit, tenant protections and land reform, while potentially increasing regulatory pressures on development viability and the PRS. At the same time, support from parties such as Labour or the Liberal Democrats on housing delivery and infrastructure investment could help the SNP progress some of its more ambitious growth-focused commitments, while headaches will inevitably be caused by the Conservatives and more pointedly Reform UK and policies related to Net Zero.

What is clear is that the next parliamentary term is likely to be anything but, with policy divergence, resignations, defections and macro-economic shocks likely to be in abundance.

[1] First Minister John Swinney’s speech on the SNP’s plan for the first 100 days of the next parliament — Scottish National Party

[2] Scottish government declares national housing emergency – BBC News

[3] Affordable Housing Delivery in Scotland Falls Sharply as New Home Completions Drop 13% – Housing Industry Leaders

[4] Who Owns Scotland 2025 – Land Matters

[5] Scottish government urged to protect Scotland’s built environment from unnecessary and ‘cheap’ demolition | CIOB

Robert Toomey is a Senior Public Affairs Manager for the Royal Insitution of Chartered Surveyors in Scotland. Robert has responsibility for RICS’ public affairs remit across the built environment, including residential, commercial and land & rural. He also has a UK-wide public affairs remit for sustainability. He holds an MSc in Global Environment, Politics and Society from the University Edinburgh and a BA (Hons) in Politics and Philosophy from the University of Liverpool. Robert is a BEFS Trustee.

This blog is part of BEFS ‘Joining the Dots’ series exploring interconnected policy areas. See the first blog for an introduction to the series. 

Get in touch – to find out more about BEFS work or to discuss a particular topic or policy area email us at info@befs.org.uk or contact the Team. 

As churches continue to be sold across Scotland, we are beginning to gain a picture of what happens to these buildings once they change hands and take on new uses. We’re also beginning to see some noticeable differences emerging between church sales in rural and urban areas. This is reflected in Shetland and Aberdeen City where the process of church sales is largely completed and where COSS has researched the change in ownership of recently sold church buildings. Shetland and Aberdeen City are covered by the same Presbytery (The Presbytery of the North East and the Northern Isles) however, the outcomes of recent church sales in these areas display very different characteristics. What stands out is the prevalence of community ownership, crowdfunding and residential conversion in Shetland and the high number of churches sold to faith groups as well as an absence of involvement from public institutions and the private sector in Aberdeen.

Shetland

In Shetland, nineteen church buildings were listed at risk of disposal in the ‘Presbytery of Aberdeen and Shetland Plan for the Presbytery 2020-2030’. Since then, the vast majority of these churches have been sold, six of which have found new lives as community owned assets. Today these buildings offer arts, events and exhibition venues for communities to enjoy.

Church buildings in Shetland, advertised for sale between 2020 and 2025 have been listed at asking prices between £10,000 and £68,000 and local crowdfunding has played an important role towards communities taking ownership of these buildings. Five out of the six community organisations that acquired a church building in Shetland used crowdfunding to raise funds to purchase the building or contribute to the funding package.  Given the prevalence of crowdfunding among community organisations raising funds to purchase a former place of worship, the Community Ownership Support Service and Democratic Finance Scotland have recently published a Churches Crowdfunder Guide which gives practical guidance on how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign.

There has also been a high number of residential conversions of former church buildings in Shetland. A total of eleven recently sold church buildings in Shetland, some of which were not listed in the Presbytery Plan, have been sold to private buyers and eight of these have associated plans for conversion into residential properties, one also including a commercial space.

Aberdeen

Similarly, as in Shetland, the vast majority of churches at risk of disposal in Aberdeen City have now been sold with eight out of fifteen of these buildings sold to faith groups, one sold to a social enterprise and one into community ownership. Clearly there has not been the same prevalence of community ownership or residential conversion as there was in Shetland as the church typologies differ significantly between the urban and rural contexts. Most notably there has been an absence of private sector investment or involvement from public institutions stepping in to acquire church buildings for sale in Aberdeen.

At the time of writing St Marks Church, a prominent B-listed church in Aberdeen city centre which lies adjacent to Union Terrace Gardens and several civic buildings such as Aberdeen Central Library, is on the market for offers over £390,000. Buildings such as this which are significant architecturally and have a location of civic importance play a distinct role in the city and their potential owners must be able to ensure a sustainable future. What remains unclear in an urban context is what will happen to the at-risk church buildings that are perhaps too large or pose too much risk due to their condition or heritage value for a community group to take on.

Across Scotland

While the process of church sales in Shetland and Aberdeen City has for the most part concluded, it must be noted that other areas of Scotland are only just seeing church sales commence. A large proportion of the church buildings earmarked for sale are yet to be sold and so, the question of what might happen to this significant number of heritage buildings, remains one which will be unfolding for potentially several years.

The New Futures: Former Places of Worship programme offers advice and support to community organisations seeking to take ownership of a former place of worship. The programme is part of the Community Ownership Support Service (COSS) and was launched in January 2025 in direct response to the significant and unprecedented number of former places of worship that are due for disposal over the next several years. The team includes three Advisors and a Programme Officer. It has been enabled with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and Development Trust Association Scotland (DTAS). If you’re interested in finding out more about the programme, you can click here to go to their website.

Louise Paterson, Churches Programme Officer.

Image: St Marks Church, Aberdeen – DTAS.

This blog is part of the fifth edition of the Places of Worship Forum (POWF) Newsletter which was published on 6th May 2026. The newsletter aims to share the ongoing work of the group. Would you like to receive the next edition of the newsletter? Sign up here.