SCOTLAND needs at least 12,000 new affordable homes every year, a housing charity warned yesterday — twice the number currently planned by Holyrood.

A report commissioned by Shelter Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations calls for at least 12,000 homes to be built every year for the next five years as a “minimum requirement” to tackle the housing crisis.

Shelter Scotland director Graeme Brown called on the Scottish government to “acknowledge there is a crisis” and “do more to reduce homelessness in Scotland.”

The Scottish government has a current target of building 6,000 homes a year.

Living Rent Campaign spokeswoman Liz Ely called for action to help tenants in the private sector “struggling to make ends meet right now.”

She said “many of these tenants are young people with no other options for housing and young families with no hope of affording a deposit for a home of their own.”

Labour MSP Neil Findlay said we are seeing families “being denied access to housing waiting lists and being forced into unaffordable properties in the private sector.”

He called for housing to be put “back at the top of the political agenda” and welcomed Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to make housing “central to Labour’s programme”

A Scottish government spokeswoman said: “We are already delivering a huge boost to affordable housing provision across Scotland” but would consider the findings of the report.