The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
It was previously announced that the future accommodation model (FAM) was being developed with the intention of changing the way in which we provide accommodation to service personnel to ensure that a career in the armed forces can be balanced better with family life. We are committed to making the changes necessary to enable our armed forces to work flexibly, reflecting the realities of modern life and to make a new accommodation offer to help more service personnel live in private accommodation and meet their aspirations for home ownership.
This commitment is being delivered through the FAM which aims to design and deliver a new accommodation model that improves and modernises aspects of the accommodation offer for service personnel and better meets the enduring operational and financial needs of the Department.
We had hoped to run a pilot towards the end of this year and remain committed to this policy principle, but the pilot scheme will now take place in 2019. This will allow the Ministry of Defence additional time to fully evaluate the scope of the pilot and better understand its impact on service personnel, with a view to delivering the most effective model. The pilot, in 2019, will also allow us to continue to work closely with broader departmental and cross-Whitehall initiatives to support service personnel accommodation.
We value the input we have had from service personnel, frontline commands and the families federations, and look forward to continuing to work with them on the implementation of FAM in the future. I will update the House in due course.
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