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. 

The 2026 Scottish Parliament election is fast approaching. If elected to form the next Scottish Government, what changes are the main parties planning to make with regard to the existing built and historic environment?

To support advocacy around the 2026 BEFS Manifesto for the Built Environment, we are actively tracking the built environment policy commitments and positions that political parties are setting out in the lead up to next month’s elections.

This blog is a selection of key party commitments which relate to the five core themes of the BEFS Manifesto: culture and heritage; net zero and the climate emergency; repair, maintenance and retrofit; training and skills; and planning and place-making.

It directly quotes from party manifestos, and is far from exhaustive; readers may wish to review relevant sections of the six party manifestos for full details and additional commitments. You can also find direct links to party manifestos at the end of the blog.

BEFS Hustings and Next Steps:

Representatives of the six main parties appearing in national opinion polls, including former Scottish Ministers Paul McLennan MSP and Patrick Harvie MSP, joined the BEFS Built Environment Hustings Event on 7 April in Edinburgh (pictured). The panel’s engagement with BEFS Member questions indicated good levels of cross-party support for exploring a number of BEFS Manifesto policy recommendations.

BEFS will be working hard across the next term of Parliament to continue to advocate for the policy changes Members and stakeholders told us they would like to see. The BEFS Manifesto will inform the consultations and Committee business we engage with, as well as the relationships we will build with new and existing MSPs across parties, and the messages we will be sharing with policy-makers at every opportunity we get!

For more on BEFS policy influencing, please:

• Read the 2026 BEFS Manifesto, which is available in three versions: the full document, an executive summary, and an accessible edition;
• Visit the consultations page of this website for briefings and evidence submissions by BEFS;
• Sign-up to the fortnightly BEFS bulletin for regular news on policy developments.

The following party manifesto extracts are ordered a-z by party name. We hope you find the summary useful – and you can contact Derek or Jonna if you would like to get involved in amplifying BEFS Manifesto recommendations to policy-makers.

BEFS Manifesto Theme 1: Culture & Heritage

Reform UK: “Scotland is blessed with a number of business sectors where we are genuinely world class owing to our geography, science and people. These 10 natural clusters of excellence comprise: Financial Services, Advanced Manufacturing, Energy, Food & Drink, Tourism & Hospitality, Creative Industries, Life Sciences, Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine. It’s time now to focus our resources in education, skills and training around these 10 clusters to get our young people and our adults tooled up for this new, modern economy.” (p15)

Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party: “We will: Support our thriving culture sector with a new Culture Act that guarantees multi-year funding for cultural bodies… Amalgamate some of Scotland’s culture quangos so that funds are directed towards the frontline rather than spent on back-office costs… Overhaul the SNP’s scandal-ridden heritage quango so that it can do the job it’s supposed to – look after our historic buildings.” (p31)

Scottish Greens: “We want to… Bring forward a Culture Bill… to rebuild our cultural sector, including provision of ongoing and long term multi-year funding… Invest in our grassroots venues and community spaces by introducing a stadium tax… Support greater community involvement in the management of Scotland’s historic and cultural sites, through the creation of community oversight boards, particularly in rural and island communities.” (p160)

Scottish Labour Party: “Scottish Labour will… Reform Creative Scotland, improving transparency and accountability… Designate a creative capital fund, to deliver financial support to upgrade and protect venues across the country.” (p54) “Scottish Labour is determined to deliver excellence for visitors, working in partnership to build a tourism strategy that …Protects Scotland’s historic assets, reforming Historic Environment Scotland so it is fit for purpose and ensuring funding is properly used to maintain Scottish sites.” (p84-85)

Scottish Liberal Democrats: “We will… Promote creative industries and culture by: Taking away the needless bureaucracy faced by those applying for funding through Creative Scotland and taking forward the recommendations of the Leitch Review… Tackling the big city bias that exists in how culture money is distributed… Maintaining free access to national museums and galleries…. Champion responsible and sustainable tourism, recognising it as a key industry and incorporate it into our industrial and skills strategies.” (p22)

Scottish National Party: “By the end of the next parliament, we will consult to develop a Culture and Arts Bill, learning lessons from other European countries with similar legislation… We will continue to deliver a long-term funding settlement for the arts of an additional £100 million annually for culture by 2028-29… In addition, we will ensure that at least a further £50 million is delivered for culture investment by the end of the next parliament… we will review the structures of Historic Environment Scotland and take any necessary steps to ensure that the recent work of the new Chair is supported.” (p44-5)

BEFS Manifesto Theme 2: Climate Emergency & Net Zero

Reform UK: “Reform will: Scrap all SNP Net Zero related targets, subsidies and quangos… Revise and simplify the planning system to fast-track permissions for hydro, micro-hydro, geothermal, open-cast coal mining, and electrical network infrastructure, especially on brownfield or industrial sites, while retaining protections for Scotland’s invaluable natural beauty, and taking into account local communities… Require every related policy decision to include an Energy Price Impact Statement so that there is transparency for the public about the effect on their energy bills.” (p13)

Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party: “We will: Redirect the SNP’s budget they spend to meet their net zero targets and put this funding towards building new houses and upgrading our infrastructure instead (p42)… Overhaul Scottish Government energy policy so that its main objective is to lower costs for households and businesses, rather than reaching arbitrary net zero targets… Abolish the SNP’s unaffordable target for reaching net zero by 2045.” (p46)

Scottish Greens: “…our top priorities [include]… Get Scotland back on track to deliver net zero by 2045, launching a coordinated climate action delivery programme to drive down emissions from transport, energy, farming and housing… Protect communities from floods, storms, heatwaves and coastal erosion by taking preventative actions now, and establish a Climate Adaptation Fund with sufficient financial resources … Drive down emissions from Scotland’s land use by introducing a well-designed Carbon Emissions Land Tax.” (p4) “…managing freshwater resources will become an increasingly important part of our adaptation to climate change.” (p143)

Scottish Labour Party: “Scottish Labour will… [promote] nature-based mitigations which restore freshwater habitats and reduce the impact of flooding… take the action needed to achieve our net zero by 2045 ambitions… We will: Create a national warm homes programme, with one-stop centres in communities to advise on new technologies, access to domestic solar, energy efficiency measures, financing, and trusted local installers to help support local jobs… Expand the use of community heat and power networks, working with local authorities, communities and local developers… Support the expansion of renewable energy generation in Scotland.” (p75/76)

Scottish Liberal Democrats: “We will… Unlock the potential of renewable power… by: Quadrupling the amount of energy generated from solar in this Parliament, unlocking investment that will roll it out across rooftops… Take the action needed now for Scotland to achieve net zero by 2045, including: Setting out a clear, detailed and stable roadmap to net zero … Expanding the market for climate-friendly products and services with steadily higher criteria in public procurement policy…. Putting tackling climate change and delivering a just transition at the heart of a new skills strategy.” (p71) “…rainproof communities and slow the flow of water… to reduce sewage and flooding.” (p77)

Scottish National Party: “Our Climate Change Plan sets out actions from now until 2040 to reduce emissions, seize the opportunities of net zero for new jobs and economic growth, improve our infrastructure and, improve our energy security. It will deliver warmer homes, cleaner air and a more resilient energy system… We will deliver on the £500 million Just Transition Fund to support workers and businesses making the change to a sustainable future… We will expand the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) to £15 million.” (p23) “We will allocate additional investment of £15 million in flood mitigation and prevention.” (p63)

BEFS Manifesto Theme 3: Repair, Maintenance & Retrofit

Reform UK: “The SNP have saddled the private rental sector with regulation after regulation, driving down supply and driving up rents. The shortage has been stark for smaller properties essential for young people, with the proportion of 25-34 year-olds forced to live with their parents having increased by almost 40% since the SNP came to power… Reform UK will repeal the SNP’s regulations for all new tenancies, while keeping the terms of existing tenancies unchanged, making homes both plentiful and more affordable for the Scots who need them most.” (p17)

Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party: “Substantial sums of public money are currently being spent on providing loans and grants for heat pumps… We would protect funding for energy efficiency upgrades but redirect the cash spent on heat pumps and put it towards building homes and infrastructure instead. Other savings would be achieved by halting expensive green upgrades that are being planned to public buildings. At a time of stretched budgets we should not be asking the taxpayer to cough up for expensive net zero upgrades to our buildings and instead urge public sector bodies to look at cheaper alternatives so that we can invest the saved cash in infrastructure that needs fixing.” (p41)

Scottish Greens: “We want to… Bring back the Heat in Buildings (Scotland) Bill to set a clear routemap for decarbonising Scotland’s homes and buildings by 2045; to include a Clean Heat Standard and target dates for compliance… Pay for people to install heat pumps, solar panels with linked battery storage and other green heating technologies on their homes, with help available for homeowners to remove fossil fuel boilers.” (p12) “… Make it easier for people who live in tenements and other housing blocks to handle repairs, maintenance and energy efficiency improvements by reviewing tenement housing laws; making owners’ associations a legal requirement.” (p138)

Scottish Labour Party: “Scottish Labour will improve the quality of Scotland’s existing housing stock by: Improving tenement maintenance arrangements, expediting progress on reform recommendations… Speeding up cladding remediation, expediating a workable “Responsible Developers’ Scheme”, reviewing the Building Safety Levy, and setting clear targets and legal requirements for delivery of remediation… Widen eligibility for energy-efficiency support, dropping the age threshold for the Warmer Homes Scotland scheme to 70 and increasing rural grant uplifts by £500.” (p72)

Scottish Liberal Democrats: “We will… Set a timescale and milestones to remove dangerous Grenfell-style cladding from all Scottish buildings.”(p54) “Cut energy bills and emissions, and tackle fuel poverty, by: Bringing forward a Fairer Heating Bill, accelerating the rollout of smart climate-friendly heating systems, and taking a fabric first approach to retrofitting… Making it easier for people in shared buildings to agree to upgrades and improvements, adopting… proposals for every tenement to have an owners’ association, reserve fund for repairs and periodic building quality inspections… Promoting alternative financial models for retrofitting and expanding the financial products available.” (p70)

Scottish National Party: “We will invest at least £10 billion in capital spending – funding new and renewed buildings and equipment – over the next ten years.” (p17) “…We are committed to reforming the Tenement (Scotland) Act 2004 and Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 by the end of the next parliament, to better meet the needs of relevant owners and tenants to enable repairs, maintenance and enhancement of such properties… We have shown clear leadership in the heat in buildings sector, demonstrated not least by our grant and loan schemes. We will take forward our Heat in Building Bill to support homeowners, landlords and tenants to transition to clean heating in a fair and affordable way.” (p33)

BEFS Manifesto Theme 4: Training & Skills

Reform UK: “Reform will re-allocate funding from the bloated welfare budget to create a joined up Scottish Skills Strategy which will: Reboot the Apprenticeship Levy funding model and guarantee every penny is invested into apprenticeships linked to colleges… Establish a First Job Passport to ensure every young person moves seamlessly from school into further education or apprenticeship or vocational training or employment… Examine a new pathway for S3/S4 students into alternative, technical education based on the successful Newlands Junior College.” (p15)

Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party: “We would introduce a new Skills Bill that would establish a permanent framework for cooperation between businesses and our further and higher educational establishments, so that skills gaps can be swiftly identified by companies. Our colleges and universities can then adapt their courses to meet demand, meaning these skills gaps are quickly addressed. For colleges, this would mean providing them with extra support to deliver the courses our economy requires.” (p69)

Scottish Greens: “The Scottish Greens will deliver a Green Industrial Mission… Plan the workforce transition into Green Jobs by improving data gathering and publishing an annual Green Jobs and Skills Outlook, linking infrastructure investment to workforce planning and inclusion… Establish regional Green Skills Hubs linking colleges, employers and unions to guaranteed routes into low-carbon work… Double Just Transition funding to £1bn… Streamline Scotland’s apprenticeship system… to deliver modern and graduate apprenticeships in key sectors.” (p36-38)

Scottish Labour Party: “Scottish Labour will give colleges a clear purpose by… Reforming college funding so that it delivers stable multi-year funding which is linked to employment outcomes and apprenticeships… Creating Apprenticeship Centres of Excellence in colleges around the country, so that key industries have the pipeline of cutting-edge skills they need to grow (p41).We will… Train the construction workforce needed to build homes, prioritising construction skills in our new apprenticeships, and within new Skills Accelerators so that each region has the workers needed to deliver local housing targets.” (p68).

Scottish Liberal Democrats: “We will… Establish a new skills strategy, mapping where the gaps are and will be, and fitting training and education systems around it, so that the country secures the skills it needs… [including in] engineering and construction… Inspire people to do apprenticeships as a route to high-wage high-skill jobs by: Ensuring pupils can do structured work experience, summer placements or foundation apprenticeships… Matching apprenticeships to labour market demand and local economic priorities…” (p19/20) “…Securely funding colleges, building on the extra £70m secured by Scottish Liberal Democrats in the 2026/27 Budget.” (p42)

Scottish National Party: “We will deliver a single national skills plan for Scotland, aligned to economic need and designed to drive productivity and support the green and digital transitions… We will deliver the two reviews we have promised with the [Colleges and Universities] sector on the Shape of Future Funding Framework for universities and the College Sector of the Future Programme… We will increase the number of apprenticeships to deliver 150,000 over the Parliament… We will introduce an Apprenticeship Accelerator Grant, backed by the Apprenticeship Levy.” (p58-59)

BEFS Manifesto Theme 5: Planning & Place-making

Reform UK: “We will build on the concept of Local Place Plans to allow local people more say in the design and form of their communities, even down to street level, through a review of current planning laws. We will cease any new building regulation and stop local planners getting in the way of sensible local development. These policies will ensure that our town and city centres come alive again, buzzing with families, pensioners, workers and visitors combined.” (p17)

Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party: “We will: Establish new specialist planning hubs across the country in order to reduce waiting times for planning applications by sharing knowledge on how to deal with different projects (p28)… Scrap the SNP’s planning framework, with councils setting their own planning strategies so that they can build the homes they need.” (p42) “… Stop Scottish Government ministers from overturning planning decisions made by local people.” (p74)

Scottish Greens: “The Scottish Greens will… Strengthen compulsory purchase and compulsory sale powers so councils and communities can bring vacant and derelict land and buildings back into use… Support councils to revive town centres by repurposing empty commercial property into workspace, cultural and community uses… Require Local Place Plans to be honoured by local planning authorities… and support communities to develop plans where none exist… Introduce a community right of appeal in planning where decisions depart from agreed plans or officer recommendations.” (p118)

Scottish Labour Party: “Scottish Labour will… [support] development across the country by… Overhauling the planning system, reforming NPF4 so that decision-makers can take account of the economic potential of projects, designating housing as critical infrastructure … Speeding up planning decisions, transforming the planning hub into a national planning agency, with expertise and specialist teams that local authorities can draw on.” (p31) “… ensure local people can create good places to live by: Delivering fair funding for local services, agreeing a new funding formula for local government… Passing a Local Democracy Act.” (p52)

Scottish Liberal Democrats: “We will… [be] Developing a programme for a new generation of net zero new towns, prioritising from the outset features such as rail links, biodiversity, district heating, and the 20-minute neighbourhood… Reforming planning to make it simpler to redevelop long-term derelict buildings.” (p52) “…Modernise the planning system, making it less arduous and delivering badly-needed infrastructure and economic growth, including by investing in digital tools that help speed up decision-making.” (p56) “…Piloting and launching a major project to integrate AI into all local authority planning departments.” (p59)

Scottish National Party: “We will continue to take a strategic approach to delivering our regeneration ambitions, including revitalising town centres and encouraging town centre living, addressing the blight of vacant and derelict land.” (p38) “…We will further simplify regulation and reform the planning system, speeding up decision making, including reforming Compulsory Purchase Orders and exploring Compulsory Sales orders… We will also take steps to reverse the decline in professional planners working in public authorities.” (p40) “… we will explore: Rural planning reform, improving permitted development rights.” (p41)

Party Manifestos: Direct Links

(a-z by title)

Change With Fairness At Its Heart: Scottish Liberal Democrats Manifesto 2026

Get Scotland Working: The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party Manifesto 2026

Let’s Demand Better: 2026 Scottish Greens Manifesto

On Scotland’s Side: SNP Manifesto 2026

Reform UK: Manifesto for Scotland 2026

Scotland Needs Change: 2026 Scottish Labour Manifesto

The Scottish Land Commission has published a new policy roadmap setting out next steps for reforming ownership and use of land to benefit people and places in Scotland. This brings together the findings of our ScotLand Futures initiative where more than 1,200 people shared their views and priorities for land reform alongside international evidence.  

The appetite for change is strong, with 96% of respondents feeling further changes to land ownership and use are needed. While Scotland has taken important steps over the past 25 years, pressures on land are now sharper and more urgent.  

Why does this matter to BEFS? 

Often land reform is seen as a rural issue, yet the frustrations and challenges are common to urban areas too. There is a huge housing need, major changes in our landscapes and high streets, and too many people feel locked out of decisions that shape their communities and futures. There is also a sense of frustration with wasted potential and dereliction.  

Our land reform policy agenda matters to the built environment because its aim is to ensure that people benefit from how land is used and owned. We have a shared goal which is to create thriving, more equitable and sustainable places. The land reform agenda therefore directly links to how we use, restore and retrofit buildings and assets.   

We see three priorities for the next phase of land reform. 

Opening new land opportunities 

We must make ownership and use possible for more people. This will diversify ownership, support housing and enterprise, and build community wealth. We can do this by creating a programme for small scale land ownership, a public land bank and public land agency. We should also simplify and strengthen routes into community and co-operative ownership. Examples like Bath Street Collective Custom Build housing in Edinburgh are few in Scotland, despite the many economic and social benefits such as all costs flowing directly into the project and fostering community agency.   

Rebalancing power by ensuring land ownership works for the public good  

Land ownership gives power, and where that power is overly concentrated or misused it must be possible to safeguard the public interest. In order to protect the public interest while ensuring power is exercised responsibly, we believe that new ways of considering the public interest should be introduced when significant areas of land are acquired. This should include expectations around local presence. We should also establish clear mechanisms to intervene where the power of land ownership is misused. 

Shaping change locally  

Scotland is undergoing major land use change and development – ranging from energy infrastructure to new settlements. We need to put people at the heart of these decisions as public support depends on local involvement and benefit. To do this, regional land use planning and local place planning should be strengthened. This can help realise the purpose of planning as set out in the 2019 Planning Act, which is to manage the use and development of land in the long-term public interest. Local stakes in ownership, delivery and benefit should be created. We should also improve local authority powers to support productive land use, for example via compulsory sales orders. 

So how can we practically deliver this?  

No single act can deliver these priorities, but we can make progress through a mix of regulation, policy and practice on the ground.  

The good news is that many of the powers and policies already exist and are familiar to BEFS members. For example, public bodies could make better use of compulsory purchase powers to create new land opportunities. Let’s consider using existing taxes and incentives to support regeneration and address inequalities. Tenement maintenance models can be an opportunity to manage land and buildings in the longer term. Let’s look at how disposals and acquisition processes create positive, lasting impacts for communities. Local Place Plans could help communities meaningfully influence local decisions. There’s also a lot we could achieve by improving and joining-up land data. 

The Scottish Land Commission is working to promote and embed these priorities both in policy and practice. Our website has practical resources and there’s a team that works to bring together different voices and join the dots on these issues. 

Katherine Pollard is Head of Policy at the Commission, leading the team responsible for policy advice, analysis and research to inform key areas of land policy. Together they provide advice to government, parliament and stakeholders. She has a background working on planning, environmental and nature finance policy working for the Scottish Government and third sector organisations. Since joining the Commission in 2018, Katherine has worked on a wide range of land reform topics including tax, vacant and derelict land and measures to address concentrated landownership.

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. 

Church closures are continuing apace in Scotland, potentially leading to losses of heritage and community spaces. One third of Scotland’s churches are due to close by 2030, with some holding their last services this past Christmas. To tackle this issue, Research in Action on Church Heritage (ReACH) (the new name for Finding Futures for Scotland’s Churches) launched last year. Since the project’s inception, the team has grown and we’ve been hard at work on the data, conducting site visits, and fostering sector-wide collaboration to deal with the urgent challenge to Scotland’s ecclesiastical heritage.

In September, we publicly launched ReACH with a symposium in Edinburgh and online. The event featured 20 lightning talks from people with a wide range of expertise across the sector, including speakers from heritage bodies, museums, and academia. Together, we got a kaleidoscopic impression of the treasures encompassed by Scottish churches, from medieval tombs to Gaelic psalm singing, modernist architecture to early modern Covenanting banners. A roundtable discussion with speakers from Historic Environment Scotland, Historic Churches Scotland, and the University of Stirling rounded off a day full of conversations which highlighted shared challenges and opportunities for the future of church buildings, as well as the importance of working together to preserve their material and social heritage.

The collective will to meet the current challenges head on is truly heartening, and we’re actively working with other groups to make sure efforts aren’t duplicated and that we’re all sharing our information and expertise. As part of this, we’ve set up a Heritage Action Group. This group will shape the ReACH project’s work, contribute to our data collection, and assist in us providing support to churches who would like help in celebrating their heritage. The membership of the group is open to anyone who feels they have something to contribute. To request an invitation to our next meeting, email churches@socantscot.org.

To get a better sense of the issues facing communities dealing with the closure of their churches, the team have been on visits to churches in Burntisland, Crail, St Monan’s, Inverness, Kirkmichael, and Cromarty. All of these communities are at different stages of their journey, and we were pleased to hear that St Monan’s has since successfully received funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to ensure its sustainable future. We also undertook our first pilot studies at Inverness Old High Kirk and Whitekirk, East Lothian, trialling our methods for recording both the tangible heritage and the intangible social value of churches.

Perhaps the biggest task for the team is creating a database which records the heritage of Scotland’s 860+ churches at risk of closure. This will allow us to get a bird’s-eye view of the situation, so that we can prioritise particular churches for further research and support. We’re beginning the process of data collection to record and build a clearer picture of the heritage which exists in Scotland’s church buildings, starting with pulling existing data about these at-risk churches together into one place. We’re really grateful to groups such as Scottish Church Heritage Research (who manage the PoWiS database) Scottish Stained Glass Trust, the Pictish Arts Society, and Sowne of Organe for already offering to share their resources with the project.  Creating a public record of what we may be losing is an important, but sometimes sobering, task— especially when almost every week we hear of another church closing its doors to the public, or put up for sale. All of the information we collect will be made publicly accessible on our website. Everyone – heritage bodies, church communities, academics, enthusiasts – will be able to use the information and images to better understand, plan and prioritise the protection of heritage at risk. It will also showcase the brilliance of Scotland’s church heritage.

As ReACH progresses, we aim to continue building connections between research and practice, supporting the people and places that make up Scotland’s rich ecclesiastical heritage.

To keep up with everything happening as part of the project, please visit our new website, which will act as a home for our church heritage database, resources and blog posts. You can also follow the project on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook (@churchheritage) or sign up to our e-newsletter here.

Dr Emily Johnston FSAScot is ReACH’s Communities Officer. She joined the team in August 2025 after her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in community engagement in archaeology. Dr Lizzie Swarbrick is the Research Manager for ReACH and is an art and architectural historian, specialising in Scottish medieval churches. ReACH is a Society of Antiquaries of Scotland project in partnership with Scotland’s Churches Trust, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Pilgrim Trust.

This blog is part of the fourth edition of the Places of Worship Forum (POWF) Newsletter which was published on 9th February 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. 

Across the Joining the Dots series, the common themes of complexity and fragmentation in the policy landscapes raises its head time and time again. For the skills policy environment, it is no different. In fact, it could be suggested that as we accelerate towards net zero, grapple with housing pressures, and seek to build climate resilient, thriving places – an available, skilled, adaptable and engaged workforce is not only critical but foundational to success. Practitioners across Scotland are already feeling the pressure to deliver retrofit, low carbon housing, resilient infrastructure and heritage-sensitive upgrades at pace.  However, across policy areas, skills are too often treated as operational details rather than strategic enablers. 

Yet, recent sector reviews and discussion papers frames skills as central to our net zero, housing, infrastructure, heritage, planning and placemaking ambitions, urging coordinated action across all policy landscapes to avoid leaving communities behind – stressing that skills are not an add-on but a delivery mechanism for policy goals – to be resilient and sustain growth in the future – an available, skilled, adaptable and engaged workforce is critical.  

It will always be a challenge to ensure that qualifications are current and relevant to the evolving workplace. Skills requirements within occupations change faster than the pace of standards development, qualification design, and processes to agree funding. However, it is crucial that we see these signals as an opportunity to translate such indicators into co-ordinated investment, procurement reform and regional scalable training that secures Scotland’s built environment for the long term i.e. accelerate Net Zero, improve housing quality and deliver a fair Just Transition.  

So, how do skills connect to policy objectives? 

Scotland’s built environment ambitions depend on a workforce equipped with retrofit, low carbon, and heritage–sensitive skills, allied to the need to develop digital skills to meet future challenges and support decarbonisation targets.  

Net Zero delivery hinges on retrofit capacity, low-carbon materials knowledge and low-emission installation skills; without these, emissions targets and housing decarbonisation will stall. Housing construction needs contractors and professionals able to work either delivering urban and/or rural stock while meeting energy efficiency goals.  Infrastructure and climate resilience demand engineers and planners versed in resilient design and whole life carbon assessment.  

Built heritage requires conservation skills that can be reconciled with repair, maintenance, new build, decarbonisation and retrofit approaches without damaging historic fabric. Procurement and placemaking are levers to embed skills development through social value, community engagement and local supply chain requirements.  

Whilst these linkages have been well documented, the current skills policies landscape is “hamstrung” with multiple overlapping roles, funding models, and delivery mechanisms creating confusion for users and undermining system effectiveness. This has been shaped by decades of institutional change, constrained by devolution, and shifting governmental priorities. Add Scotland’s lack of a coherent national skills strategy, which has led to competing narratives, duplication of efforts, and a failure to establish clear accountability or shared measures of success.  Such a “wicked problem” requires innovative, cohesive systems thinking. 

We need to shine a light on the importance of skills policies that are both integrated and place-based. This means linking skills development with broader local strategies for job quality improvements, housing, transport, and innovation support.  Therefore, as a sector to address the apparent skills policy inertia, we need to aim to offer a more nuanced view of what works and what needs improvement. All of us need to be aware that each gap not only maps to a strategic objective but also presents windows of opportunity to translate recent skills policy signals and industry missions into coordinated investment, procurement reform, and regional scalable training that secures Scotland’s built environment for the long term.  

So, what are the key skills policy gaps and tensions? 

I believe there are six key gaps and tensions: 

• Insufficient cross–sector workforce planning: Siloed portfolios (housing, transport, heritage, infrastructure, etc.) miss opportunities for shared training hubs and transferable credentials. 

• Fragmented policy alignment and training pathways: Retrofit, planning, procurement, and skills strategies frequently operate in parallel rather than in an integrated way, creating delivery gaps and missed opportunities for scale. 

• Regional disconnects and insufficient training capacity: Disparities in institutional capacity, especially between urban and rural areas, hinder equitable access to the provision of high-quality skills and alignment with local needs, limiting local pipelines for craft apprenticeships and professional roles. 

• Procurement misalignment: Current commissioning models often favour short–term cost savings (lowest capital cost) over whole–life value or workforce development, undermining demand for skills. 

• Innovation skills shortfall: Uptake of offsite manufacture, Building Information Modelling and circular practices is constrained by digital and manufacturing skills gaps 

• Built Heritage marginalisation: Traditional skills are frequently viewed as niche, rather than mainstream and important contributors to net zero, placemaking, and economic resilience. 

Without concrete policy alignment across skills, procurement, planning, infrastructure, repair, and climate programs, the parallel ambitions of built environment decarbonisation, housing resilience, and regional planning cannot be met without coordinated action on skills. We must look to tackle these tensions from a first-principles-thinking perspective if we truly want to challenge the status quo.  

Strategic Opportunities 

To close that gap, I would like to offer policymakers and sector leaders 5 key actions to prioritise: 

• Undertake robust policy evaluations:  We have a diluted understanding of what and how well skills interventions work and of determining the most effective way to increase skills levels and reduce unemployment 

• Reform procurement and incentivise: Move to value–based procurement frameworks that explicitly reward provision of training, knowledge transfer, innovative approaches, and alignment with local needs (climate resilience, built heritage and circular economy, supply chain engagement, employment and skills outcomes) 

• Fund regional training hubs: Invest in place–based centres that can be replicated regionally to scale prioritising communities affected by the transition, and to mainstream new competencies, and link schools, colleges, and employers to create clear career pathways and retain talent locally.  

• Create a National Built Environment Skills Framework: Standardise cross–sector credentials and enable portability between construction and infrastructure roles.  Also look to introduce stackable industry recognised micro credentials that allow workers to upskill incrementally (e.g., retrofit installer → low carbon systems specialist). 

• Embed cross–sector governance: Establish a convening mechanism that brings together skills bodies, local authorities, and industry to align targets and funding. 

These are not new or groundbreaking opportunities, but they are foundational to a resilient, sustainable built environment sector.  

Final Thought 

We already have new innovative centres of practice in the pipeline, such as Lock 16 – Scotland’s Centre of Excellence for Canals & Traditional Skills, Retrofit Scotland and Highlands and Islands Skills centre of Excellence for Skills, Safety and Innovation. 

We cannot afford to rest, we must be bold, coordinate action now, through systemic strategic collaboration, innovation, and transformation, and turn the current skills policy landscape from a constraint into Scotland’s built environment’s competitive advantage.  Ultimately, we must treat Scotland’s skills policy as strategic infrastructure, to allow us to indeed convert gaps, opportunities and policy signals into coordinated meaningful action.

At the end of 2025 Built Environment Forum Scotland facilitated a focused workshop  as part of the Scottish Castles Association’s conference ‘Scotland’s Castles: Use Them or Lose Them‘, held at the Engine Shed in Stirling. 

The events, held on the on 9-10 October 2025, brought together stakeholders from across the heritage sector to explore how the planning system can effectively support the restoration and reuse of Scotland’s historic castles and related buildings. The conference featured keynote speakers from Historic Environment Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland, the Landmark Trust, and the King’s Foundation, alongside restorers, planners, conservation professionals and building owners. 

Following the conference, BEFS was invited to facilitate a workshop with a smaller group to build on the conference discussions and reach consensus on the key principles and practical steps for action. Participants identified several priority areas, including the need for consistent planning guidance, alongside signposting to accessible information for potential buyers, practical case study sharing, and front-loaded pre-application support for prospective owners. 

The workshop outcomes highlighted that what is needed is not new standardised policy, but better sharing of existing information, evidence-based solutions, and practical tools such as route maps and resource toolkits to help navigate the planning process. 

BEFS looks forward to working with the Scottish Castles Association on emerging recommendations and next steps. 

Read the full outcomes report here.