'PARLIAMENT is now in recess till September giving MSPs a good opportunity to spend more time in the constituency meeting people and hearing what they think are the key issues and concerns as well as what is good and works for our local communities.

Housing or a lack of affordable suitable housing is still the biggest issue that I have people contact me about. I remain concerned that the pledge to build 35,000 social rented houses over the next five years is well behind in year one and unless there is a focussed delivery plan at the local authority level it will not be achieved. I have asked Fife Council to set out the detail of their five-year plan stating how many houses to be built, what type of house and where, what land is available and what planning approval is in place and being worked up. All of these issues can be barriers to building houses and I am just not sure that the permissions, the land and the detailed planning are in place.

There is then the issue of having the capacity to build the houses and this again is why planning for new build is so important. We need the skills, the trades people but the building industry is reporting major skills gaps and so there needs to be joined up planning for apprenticeships and training programmes and again there is no evidence that this level of planning is taking place at a local, regional or national level. I raised many of these issues with the housing minster in Parliament just a few weeks ago and he told me it is all in hand, I am not so sure.

Skills shortages in our economy seem to be in the main addressed by recruiting skilled Labour from across Europe and bringing those skills here to do the work that we just don’t have the skills to do our selves. So economic migration in Scotland has been a necessary and good thing for our economy and we will continue to need more migration in future, however, we must alongside this address the skills gaps and give people living here the support, the knowledge and the skills to succeed in the labour market. This is fundamental and is why the SNP government must reverse the deep and damaging cuts they made to college budgets and get their act together in workforce planning'.