The MoD has initiated a major redevelopment of service family accommodation (SFA) after its £6 billion repurchase of stock from a private owner.
Some 36,400 properties are involved and a huge rental obligation has been terminated as a result of the deal, saving around £230 million a year for the state’s coffers.
The dwellings were originally sold off in 1996 in what turned out to be a disastrous contract for defence, with official estimates putting the total cost to the taxpayer at £8bn.
Annington Homes purchased around 55,000 military houses for £1.7bn and was able to sell 18,000 of them on the open market for a huge profit. The MoD rented the remainder on a 200-year lease but also had to stump up for maintenance and repairs rather than the landlord.
As serving personnel are all too aware, many of the homes were decades old and required constant fixing. A defence committee report published last year confirmed that two-thirds of the estate “needs major refurbishment or rebuilding” to bring it up to an acceptable standard.
While this unwanted legacy is decades old, it is relevant now because the poor outcomes for the armed forces motivated the government to buy back the properties and set about making improvements.
“Looking back, it was a bonkers deal,” Phil Riley, Director of Accommodation at the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), tells Soldier. “But at least we now own and control these properties again.”
Riley’s team oversee the private contractors Amey and Vivo, responsible for carrying out repairs and maintenance on SFA in the UK, as well as Pinnacle Group, which provides the National Service Centre and housing officers.
“Improving this housing has become our top priority and we’re developing a strong customer-focused ethos throughout our organisations to improve standards,” he says.
“I know some of your readers will be sceptical because they’ve heard all this before, but I believe in a few months’ time personnel will feel a real difference, especially those who’ve moved house or had repairs done to their homes.”
A document setting out the way forward for service housing, detailing how properties will be refurbished and rebuilt and the financing of that scheme, will be published in the summer.
“The new strategy will include how we can make better use of MoD land for affordable homes,” explains Riley. “Many old and tired properties are in relatively low-density areas so we could pull them down and build more units in the same space.
“We’ll also create better houses to live in and sell others to bring income in or to create opportunities for personnel and veterans to buy as well – that’s one of the key deliverables.”
Projects of this scale often take years to materialise, however, and with surveys consistently indicating poor accommodation is driving people out of the military, Riley is aware that action is needed now.
The DIO has spent £180m over the last year or so improving insulation in some 600 properties, treating long-term damp and mould in 1,000 homes and refurbishing 200 long-term empty quarters.
Riley and his team have also been touring the country, looking at what improvements can be made with available funds.
“I speak to families, chains of command and welfare officers, and the priorities coming through will be of no surprise; people just want safe, warm and clean homes,” he says.
“I’ve found soldiers living in fuel poverty because heating systems were so decrepit and others with damp and mould coming back time and again. Some were even moving children out to grandparents in the winter months. It’s unacceptable but now we own these properties we can tackle root causes of problems, not just symptoms.
“We’re aware we need to start turning the dial to improve military housing really quickly and we have money to invest in improving SFA and the quality of their support services,” he adds.
Some of the initiatives already approved or being evaluated include:
It is too early to judge whether all these initiatives will improve conditions quickly enough for most personnel – and how many of them will still be serving by the time the new military housing strategy makes itself felt. But Riley is undoubtedly committed about making as many significant improvements as quickly as possible.
“I’m confident the offer will start to feel better soon because we can make a real difference now we own these houses and have funding,” he concludes.
“We have a clear plan and while families can’t see the huge effort going on behind the scenes, I can assure them we are working our hardest to get this absolutely right.”
