In advance of this week’s Scottish Budget the Scottish Property Federation (SPF) has pressed finance secretary Derek Mackay on a number of key points designed to help Scotland’s real estate industry support the Scottish economy to grow and thrive.

Given that the government and wider public sector have limited resources over the next few years, the real estate sector body has urged Derek Mackay to create the right conditions to allow private sector investment to come forward to support the economy.

These proposals include:

David Melhuish, director of the Scottish Property Federation, said: “We fully appreciate that this is a Budget where Derek Mackay has very little room for manoeuvre and that’s why we’ve suggested a number of financial tweaks which, whilst not representing a huge swing in policy direction, will have a profoundly positive impact for Scotland’s real estate sector – a key driver in the economy.

“Our members have raised concerns about the implementation of some of the proposals in the Barclay Review, particularly around the removal of listed building relief and we have asked the Cabinet Secretary to think again in this area. Likewise we feel that any annual increase to business rates should be capped at the level of CPI – failure to do so will see Scotland at a competitive disadvantage to our neighbours south of the border.

“We already have data which shows significant drops in sales of residential property valued over £400k and highlights that would-be purchasers are being spooked by high LBTT costs. The market is sending out a warning signal on LBTT and the Scottish Government would do well to consider amending the threshold in order to support the market and encourage more transactions, and more revenue, over the next year.

“In the week following the publication of the Scottish Government’s Planning Bill we are also asking the Finance Secretary to look again at how resources are deployed to Scotland’s hard pressed planning departments. Since the six-fold increase in planning fees levied upon developers, we are disappointed that local government has yet to make any public commitment to reinvest those increased fees into the planning service, which the higher fees are intended to support.”