The Chancellor’s £3bn Budget boost won’t touch the sides of the Army’s housing scandal

The state of military housing is one of the biggest contributors to low morale in our Armed Forces
The state of military housing is one of the biggest contributors to low morale in our Armed Forces - Kevin Wheal/ Alamy

Amid the Budget turmoil, one ostensibly positive headline for anyone who occasionally lifts their eyes from their navels and casts a glance at the state of the wider world: the British Armed Forces are to receive a £3 billion boost.

Let’s leave aside the fact that inflation means that even this pledge won’t see us hit the spending target of 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence and look at what that money might be spent on. More boots on the ground, perhaps – after the Defence Secretary admitted that our Armed Forces aren’t currently capable of stopping an invasion? The RAF’s Tempest combat aircraft programme, which looks shaky at the moment as it costs so much?

One thing that is unlikely to see the merest sliver of the payment pie, however, is also one of the biggest contributors to low morale and poor retention in Britain’s Armed Forces, and that is military housing.

Put simply, it is a state. Crumbling, damp, leaky and mouldy, a good chunk of the housing stock we make our soldiers, sailors and airmen live in should be condemned. Were these people renting in the private sector, their landlords would be hauled over the coals, perhaps even taken to court. Not for military personnel, however – they don’t even have a tenancy agreement in place. The cost of living in military accommodation is taken off the serving person’s pay packet as a charge – and then you are in the hands of the gods, or rather the government providers responsible for subcontracting the maintenance of service families’ accommodation. And good luck with that.

One military pal, who has followed her husband around the country with their two children for 22 years, sent me a video of the leaking ceiling in their married quarter. Bulging, cracked and dripping, it looks as if it is about to cave in at any moment. She reported the leak when it first started, and asked for it to be fixed as a matter of urgency, but nothing happened. She escalated the problem, but again, nothing. Only when she took to X, looping in the maintenance contractor responsible, was the ceiling fixed – several months after it had started dripping.

Another friend, living in an ancient military block of flats in London, told the tale of a leak in one of the top floor flats. The ceiling had come down and water was slowly dripping into the two flats below – but because the top flat was unoccupied (as it wasn’t fit for purpose), nothing was done about it. The same block of flats, several years ago, had a large chunk of masonry fall off from the pediment above one of the front doors. The residents reported the issue, worried that more masonry would fall – on a child perhaps. Some tape was put up around the door and residents were asked to use the back door. Several weeks later, the tape was quietly removed. The masonry, however, remains unfixed.

Another video shows a leak dripping onto a carpet that’s growing steadily mouldier. “We also have a back door that doesn’t lock, windows that refuse to stay closed, growing cracks in the walls. All of which have been reported, but nothing getting done – as per.” Earlier this year, military personnel were warned that boilers in 2,500 homes “might” cause a fire. Alfie Usher, who runs the @MilitaryBanter feed on X, posted a video of one actually burning. “At least a fire should dry out the damp in the walls,” replied one user.

“This is currently the state of our bathroom,” one person emailed Mr Usher in March this year, accompanied by a series of photos showing black mould covering all four walls and the ceiling. “It’s absolutely mortifying and embarrassing sharing this with you but we haven’t been left with much choice.” The mould had been a problem since moving in two and a half years ago, the person said, but now there was another leak, from the bathroom into the kitchen, dripping down to the light and plug sockets. He had reported it in January; nothing had happened in the two months since then. “We haven’t been able to use our shower since, as we’re worried the kitchen ceiling will come through. I have phoned to chase the issue every day and the case has been passed on – yet here we are with absolutely no progress made on the mould and still unable to use our shower... I’m sorry to have contacted you about this but I’m at a loss as to who else I can go to.”

The utter despair is palpable. These are people who have signed up to serve their country, who take on jobs that most of us are too scared to do, who cheerfully set their hands to pretty much anything thrown at them, from floods to fights, yet who can’t get the people who employ them to sort out their leaking ceilings. The military, lest we forget, are not legally allowed to strike. They have no trade union. They cannot hold the Government to ransom over the shoddy state of their accommodation, which most live in because they also have to move jobs every two or three years, and they don’t get paid enough to rent privately.

Defence chiefs know the shoddy state of Forces housing is an issue. A landmark report in April this year highlighted the persistent problems of damp, mould, gas and electrical faults and pest infestations. The Kerslake Commission criticised the Ministry of Defence’s investment programme as insufficient, and warned that failing to address the issue could have a serious effect on recruitment. In May, the MoD trumpeted a £400 million investment in military accommodation, boasting of over a thousand properties brought back into use for Forces families as a result.

And yet the leaking ceilings and mouldy carpets persist. Small wonder we can’t muster enough troops to fight a war – if this is what they’re fighting for.