Defence Housing Strategy

Al Carns Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)]

Our brave service personnel and their families make extraordinary sacrifices to keep us all safe. In this new era of threat, we rely on them more every day. The least they deserve in return is a decent home.

Years of chronic under-investment and the failed 1996 privatisation of military housing have driven down forces’ morale and driven too many personnel out of our armed forces altogether, contributing to a long-term decline in numbers. The very least they deserve is a warm, secure, decent home. And yet, over the past decade and a half, military housing has been steadily getting worse, with families forced to live in damp, mouldy, poorly maintained accommodation. Satisfaction with forces housing fell to its lowest level on record in 2023.

High-quality service family accommodation, with rents set at a significant discount to the open market, should be an active driver of people into our armed forces. But for the past 14 years, it has too often been the opposite.

Many of the problems we inherited derive from the Conservatives’ sell-off of our nation’s military homes to private company Annington Homes Ltd in 1996. Under the terms of this botched deal, the taxpayer picked up the bill for maintenance and rent. But any benefits from development opportunities or increase in the value of the homes were surrendered to a private equity fund. By the time Labour came to Government last year, that deal was costing the British taxpayer £600,000 a day in rental payments, with all maintenance costs also falling on the Government. This deal left our nation nearly £8 billion worse off and crucially, left a generation of dedicated service personnel and their families in substandard homes.

Six months after being elected to Government, we transferred more than 36,000 military homes back into public hands. This decisive action unlocked a historic opportunity to fix forces housing and supercharge housebuilding on defence land. Over the past six months, we have been making rapid improvements to ensure that our people feel swift benefits from this deal. In April, we launched a new consumer charter for forces families giving each family a named housing officer, introducing higher move-in standards, making quicker repairs and accelerating a renovation programme to modernise the worst homes.

This summer, we updated the charter to remove absurd rules that should never have been imposed, so forces families can now decorate how they wish and keep pets without seeking permission. And in May, we pledged an additional £1.5 billion of investment into service family accommodation this Parliament.

We are building on the progress of the past year by publishing our defence housing strategy, the most significant change for armed forces housing in more than 50 years. A copy of the strategy has been placed in the Library of the House. This strategy starts one of Britain’s most ambitious building programmes in decades, delivering new homes for military and civilian families and driving economic growth. This Government will deliver on all their recommendations.

Recommendations include:

Committing to a generational renewal of military housing.

Nine in 10 military homes to be modernised or upgraded to new, higher standards, with 14,000 homes rebuilt or substantially refurbished, backed by a 10-year investment programme totalling £9.2 billion.

Establishing a new ‘forces first’ approach, underpinned by a new, stand-alone defence housing service, to better manage military homes. This will ensure that defence is putting the voices of forces families at the forefront, while delivering new home ownership opportunities for veterans and serving military personnel.

Delivering for the nation by kickstarting a historic programme of house building on surplus defence land, with the potential for over 100,000 new homes for civilian and military families, delivering billions of pounds in economic output and supporting thousands of jobs.

There are two fundamental objectives: first, to fix the homes that we have, and secondly, to build more homes for our forces and for families across Britain.

On the first of those points, we are making a clean break after 14 years of under-investment and decline. This Government have kickstarted a decade of renewal and a historic level of investment to bring forces homes up to a standard befitting our armed forces. Thousands of military homes will receive a complete makeover, with new kitchens, bathrooms and heating systems, to ensure military families have the homes that they deserve. Work on 1,000 of the worst homes is already under way. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and set a higher bar for forces’ accommodation, so that it matches the levels accepted as the norm by the very best civilian housing organisations.

Delivering more homes, in the right places, also means that after years of uncertainty, we can widen access to service housing to better reflect modern life. This means forces personnel who share responsibility for their child’s upbringing and couples in long-term relationships will, in future, be able to access defence family housing for the first time.

As well as renewing the homes we have, we will supercharge surplus defence land to build the new homes that Britain needs. The Ministry of Defence owns a lot of land and, through the defence housing strategy, we will convert this opportunity to an advantage. Using surplus defence land not needed for current operational use, we have the capacity to build over 100,000 homes for both military and civilian families, creating jobs and growth up and down the country. Under the ‘forces first’ policy, military families and veterans have the chance to go to the front of the queue for home ownership on these sites. This programme will not only prioritise those who serve and have served our nation, but also support the national house building target and help drive economic growth.

A ‘forces first’ pilot is already under way in Feltham, south-west London, and is expected to generate hundreds of homes and jobs. The MOD has now undertaken a fresh land release exercise that could unlock thousands more homes. When surplus land is identified, it will no longer be sold off in a fire sale of assets that yields next to nothing for our armed forces or economy. From now on, defence land will be used as a stimulus to build the homes that Britain needs, create jobs and drive growth.

This Government recognise that we cannot transform our warfighting capability without also improving the welfare of our people. These two concepts are not in competition; they are inseparable. Last year, our armed forces were awarded the biggest pay rise in two decades and we expanded wraparound childcare support to families deployed overseas. Today, we are promising safe and decent housing for every single forces family, backed by the necessary funding.

The Government thank all those who worked so hard on the strategy, particularly the chair, Natalie Elphicke Ross, and her small, dedicated team for their expertise and rigour. Also, the forces’ families federations and thousands in our service community, who contributed vital insight and candour.

[HCWS1016]