Case Studies

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SFT Innovates

Positive impact of innovative housing solution

Increasing the supply and improving the quality of housing across Scotland remains a key priority for SFT and our award-winning housing experts are working to put in place innovative solutions to increase the supply of homes for rent. 

Working hand in hand with The City of Edinburgh Council, our housing team has created “Edinburgh Living”, a new provider of mid-market and affordable-market rent housing. The partnership will provide at least 1,500 new, high-quality homes in the capital over the next five years and represents an investment of nearly £250m in the city’s housing supply.

Edinburgh Living builds on the successful legacy of the National Housing Trust and will offer 750 homes for rent at mid-market rent, funded through a loan of £110m from the City of Edinburgh Council, supported with £16m of funding from the Scottish Government.

It will also create 750 homes for affordable market rent, funded wholly through a £138m loan from the City of Edinburgh Council; the first time that generally accessible build to rent housing has been funded at-scale by a Scottish local authority in a bold and innovative move by the Council.

The homes will be built across the city and will offer individuals, couples and families stable and long term housing options. The first homes for mid-market rent have been built in the Clermiston area of the city and will be occupied imminently. More homes are under construction in the Greendykes and Sighthill areas and are expected to be handed over to Edinburgh Living in early 2019, with more to follow throughout the year.

Convenor of the Housing and Economy Committee Cllr Kate Campbell, explained: “Edinburgh Living is an innovative partnership and will play an important role in providing much needed affordable housing in the city. As a responsible landlord, Edinburgh Living will offer a high level of customer service, good quality homes and excellent places to live. We’re very excited that the first tenants will be moving into Edinburgh Living homes before the end of the year.”

SFT’s housing team has begun work with other local authorities to establish the potential to replicate this partnership approach in other locations across Scotland.

SFT Innovates

Positive impact of innovative work to attract datacentre companies to Scotland

For any country, having access to fast and reliable digital communications is a must to attract and retain businesses to deliver economic growth.

In today’s fast-paced world, digital connectivity delivered at a snail’s-pace is bad for business. In Scotland, all data sent over the internet has been delivered to London or Manchester via large datacentres before ending up at its intended destination – even if it was to your next-door neighbour – in other words, delivered at a snail’s pace.

However, changes are afoot. Our digital experts have been working with industry and the wider public sector to drive innovation and change, ensuring the right mechanisms, partnerships and commercial approaches are developed to attract datacentre operators to move into Scotland.

And our team’s work in making Scotland a more attractive place to invest and relocate is starting to pay off.

SFT has recently created “Host in Scotland,” a one stop destination for datacentre operators and stakeholders to meet with a wider network of contacts and partners with a focus on Scotland. One company that has joined Host in Scotland is Datavita, that has established Scotland’s largest and most advanced purpose-built datacentre located between Glasgow and Edinburgh and stores and processes data for many large corporations across Scotland.

With DataVita fully operational, its presence is acting as a catalyst to attract more datacentre companies to open up in Scotland to support growing industries, including Scotland’s burgeoning Fintech sector as well as encouraging existing datacentre providers to expand.

SFT has taken the lead in developing this sector, working with partners in Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International to establish the Scottish ‘go-to-market’ in this exciting, vibrant market to deliver economic growth across Scotland.

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