ROOF Blog

Almost 8000 homes for Armed Forces families are standing empty despite the Ministry of Defence spending £17m a year renting substitute properties. Figures showed there are currently 7889 unoccupied homes for service families in the UK, including 2077 that have been empty for more than a year. But the MoD has spent more than £88m since 2004 on renting homes where no suitable properties are available, with the bill for 2009 topping £17m. Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, Willie Rennie, who uncovered the figures, said: ‘It is scandalous that the Government is spending millions renting forces homes despite already having thousands of houses standing empty.’

A third of armed forces families in Ministry of Defence (MoD) housing are unhappy with their standard of housing, a National Audit Office report has found. In the past two years just 1,700 of forces’ 50,000 homes have been upgraded, and at the rate of progress it will take two decades to get the housing stock up to standard. More than 9,000 properties, or 18 per cent of stock, are standing empty because they are in the wrong location or are too small for families. The MoD provides housing for 42,000 army personal and families and spends £38 million on maintaining vacant properties and £16 million on private rented accommodation for families it cannot house.