The chief executive of CALA Group has highlighted the “exceptional progress” the business has made in transforming its size and scope as it looks ahead to deliver another year of growth in 2018.

In its full year results for the year ending 30th June 2017, the hosuebuilder announced record profits of £68.5 million (2016: £60.1m), and completed 1,677 units over the period, an increase of 46% on the previous year (2016: 1,151).

Alan Brown, CEO of CALA Group, said: “2017 has been another excellent year for CALA. We made exceptional progress in transforming the size and scope of our business, delivering our fifth consecutive year of record revenues and profits.

“Trading in our business across Scotland remained strong throughout the year and pleasingly we saw a stabilisation of market conditions in Aberdeen, which gave us the confidence to increase the number of homes sold and invest in new land.”

Despite the “challenging” Scottish housing market, Mr Brown said he remains confident in CALA’s ability to build on its progress.

He added: “Looking ahead to 2018, although continuing uncertainty will no doubt present further challenges to the Scottish housing market, the fundamental supply and demand imbalance remains. We are confident our strategy will deliver another year of growth and enter 2018 with strong trading momentum.

“While we have been increasingly encouraged by the direction of travel among policy makers, there remains several areas where reform would further help housebuilders more effectively get on with building the homes that Scotland needs in 2018.

“The Scottish Government’s pragmatic approach to planning, especially in relation to the delivery of new housing allocations from local plans, has been positive. However, reforming the planning process through extra funding for local authority planning departments would support the further acceleration of housebuilding. Likewise, it would also be helpful to address the inconsistent approach of local authorities, along with the delivery disconnect between national housing policy and local plan delivery. While we have grown significantly during the year and remain on course to achieve our growth ambitions, our output would have been considerably higher had we not encountered some entirely avoidable issues stemming from these delays.

“We’d also like to see the government look again at the Land and Building Transaction Tax (LBTT) along with the focused delivery of all types of housing through a robust planning system. The new draft planning bill in Scotland, which is currently going through the consultation process, looks to address some of these challenges.

“The most important point is the actual ‘timely’ delivery of increased housing numbers in the early years of the local plan periods, to reinforce the importance of housing delivery as a key national policy. We hope these key elements are not lost during the consultation process and the final bill does not further create delays or complicate the planning system.

“Maintaining the bill’s clear focus on the delivery of housing will be crucial to speeding up the decision making process and enabling housebuilders to deliver the new homes Scotland desperately needs.”