The House of Commons Defence Committee has published its report investigating the state of military housing, finding it lacking in many areas
The military housing report, Service Accommodation, has found consistently low levels of satisfaction in both Service Family Accommodation (SFA) and Single Living Accommodation (SLA), which fell to their lowest levels yet in 2023.
The report also makes recommendations on how to improve the situation.
“Persistent problems with contract maintenance and repairs”
The Defence Committee found that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has not been investing enough money into military housing for decades, with a third of SLA and two-thirds of SFA being in such a state of disrepair that they have been deemed not fit for purpose.
The issues would require billions in investments to both refurbish or rebuild sub-standard military housing to make them liveable. The issues often stem from the contractual arrangements made for the repair and maintenance of military housing, which frequently result in poor quality work and a poor lived experience for serving personnel and their families.
The report quotes Michael Green, chief executive of Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), who called the state of military housing as “shocking”, estimating two-thirds of SFA as needing rebuilding to meet modern standards.
SLA saw issues such as broken ceiling panels, outdated bathrooms and washing facilities, old furniture and fittings, and issues with hot water, heating, flooding, damp, rats, and in one example twenty-three occupants were sharing just three working toilets and showers between them.
Currently, there are 133,000 permanent and temporary bed spaces in the UK, 17,000 bedspaces overseas, and 21,000 bedspaces across the UK training estate, housing 81,000 service personnel across all services, with 56% of this number living in SLA.
Investment is needed to improve military housing
The MoD and DIO have committed to spending £5.3bn over the next decade in order to improve the state of SLA, while SFA will see £1.8bn spent.
The report highlights that the money for SFA seems disproportionately low, and encourages the government to set out a detailed investment plan for both SFA and SLA, detailing how far the plans are expected to go to address the myriad of issues in both.
The report also holds DIO responsible for the contractual relationship between suppliers, contributing to the problems with the rollout of new accommodation service. Therefore, DIO “must prove it has learned lessons from the failures in the delivery of these contracts.”
This includes clarifying what improvements have been made and are being made, be able to guarantee that homes will meet an acceptable standard of decoration, maintenance, and cleanliness.
Overall, the report agrees with the MoD’s acknowledgement that current funding is insufficient for modernising military housing, but the report is further not confident that the required investment will come in future Defence budgets.
