Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many service personnel live in single living accommodation (a) overseas and (b) in total.

As of 18 April 2024, there are 78,760 service personnel living in single living accommodation. Of those, 1,950 service personnel are living overseas.

SLA is a significant component of the domestic accommodation for Service personnel, ranging from multi-occupancy rooms with shared ablutions, through to high specification ensuite rooms with storage, social areas and kitchens depending on the accommodation purpose and requirement.

SLA is broken into three principal categories:

Permanent. Accommodation on units/bases to which personnel are allocated for an assigned tour of duty. For some people, this is where they live during the week and they may commute back to their family home at weekends; for others, this room can be their only home in which they have all their possessions and where they live full time over weekends and leave periods.

Temporary (transit). Accommodation for visitors, or those on training courses. This can be for one night or for some months where residential courses are delivered for example. Furthermore, a person on a four-month course can be occupying two bedspaces: their home unit room where they have all their possessions and their room on the course. In some cases, a serving person can live in an SFA with their family, occupy a room at their unit during the week and also occupy a transit room for a period. The definition of transit accommodation may also change; if a unit decides to change a block of transit accommodation into permanent accommodation or vice versa then they may do this in response to accommodation demand. Units may designate certain rooms in a permanent block as transit for varying periods of time this allows flexibility to be responsive to accommodation demands that ebb and flow. They can host foreign nations on exercises, accommodate personnel from other bases as overflow or in support of ceremonial activity.

Training estate. Where units and individuals deploy to exercise, there are no accommodation charges levied for this component of the estate, neither is there a grading system.