AROUND half of a £16million pot allocated to the Borders for affordable housing went unspent last year, councillors have been told.

Scottish Borders Council (SBC) – which declared a housing emergency in May – handed more than £8m back to the Scottish Government.

Despite the significant underspend, 177 new build affordable homes were delivered in 2023/24, comfortably surpassing the target of 141.

A report outlining progress on the local housing strategy (LHS) was presented to the council’s executive committee at a meeting last week.

Kelso councillor Simon Mountford said he was “perplexed” by the underspend.

“It’s a bit of an anomaly that we can undershoot on funding yet overshoot on the delivery of housing,” he said.

“We’ve underspent by £8m on the allocation of funding and I notice that the allocation going forward for the next year has been reduced from £16m to £12m.”

SBC principal officer for housing strategy, policy and development Lindsey Renwick said that project delays had caused the underspend.

“Last year there was a significant underspend,” she said. “The plan is to spend fully out this year.

“When we are planning the delivery of housing sometimes it slips and last year it was unfortunate that a few projects have slipped through into this financial year, but the aim is to spend out this year.

“We do meet with the housing associations and Scottish Government regularly so that if there’s a slippage and another project or development can come through we can put that into the programme quite quickly, so hopefully we are in a position where that [slippage] won’t happen again.”

Tweeddale East councillor Julie Pirone asked what happened to the unspent cash.

Ms Renwick confirmed that the money goes back to the Scottish Government.

Ms Pirone said: “We all know that we’ve declared a housing emergency and we need to make sure that we keep to that or find other solutions where we don’t have the underspend.”

Councillors were told that the number of meetings with registered social landlords had been increased in a bid to avoid another underspend.

The report states: “The council and its partners have made good progress in the first year of the LHS 2023-2028.

“Year one has seen some challenges as a result of the legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and increasing pressures within the housing sector across Scotland.

“Despite these pressures, achievements during 2023/24 included the delivery of 221 affordable homes, 177 of these being new supply affordable homes; the submission of an ambitious strategic housing investment plan (2024-2029) underpinned by up to £267m of investment; the development of the first local heat and energy efficiency strategy (LHEES); a number of empty home being brought back in to use and ongoing investment in energy efficiency measures and major adaptations in the private sector.”