The Defence Committee recently said that the quality of service personnel homes is “shocking”, revealing that mould and damp was driving people out of the Armed Forces.
Published 22nd Oct 2026, 06:00 BST
The Ministry of Defence has cut almost £2bn of spending on refurbishing accommodation for military personnel and their families that has been affected by mould and damp issues.
The MoD has deferred £800m that was due to be spent on Service Family Accommodation (SFA), which is subsidised housing for service men and women’s families, until the next Parliament.
A letter from the department’s permanent secretary Jeremy Pocklington to the Public Accounts Committee of MPs revealed the budget for this has been cut by a quarter, which equates to £1bn, over this Parliament.
It said: “The impact of this deferral on the defence family homes renewal programme and the impact on service families and capacity of the estate to meet military requirements is being assessed by officials.”
On top of this, the MoD is also deferring £950m for Single Living Accommodation (SLA), which applies to service personnel not using SFA.
As defence secretary, John Healey made improving military accommodation one of his key aims, and pledged to spend £9bn over a decade on this, including building 100,000 new homes on surplus land.
He said then: “For too long, many military families have lived in sub-standard homes, but this government is taking decisive action to fix the dire state of military accommodation.”
In the summer, he quit the Government claiming Sir Keir Starmer’s Defence Investment Plan (Dip) did not have enough funds to keep the country safe.
Next Wednesday, Mr Healey will give his first Budget as Chancellor, however he is not expected to set out how the UK will reach spending 3 per cent of GDP by 2030.
On Monday, the current Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the Armed Forces were being asked to “live within their means”.
He told the Commons that there were historic issues of “routine overspending” that had required “reprioritisation”.
This comes as the Government suffered a defeat in the House of Lords, as peers said the Armed Forces Bill failed to improve SLA standards.
Military accommodation has been heavily criticised in recent years, with a recent Commons committee finding problems with maintenance and historic underinvestment leaving two-thirds of SFA housing “essentially no longer fit for purpose”.
The Defence Committee said that the quality of service personnel homes is “shocking”, revealing that mould and damp was driving people out of the Armed Forces.
A recent survey from the MoD, published in August, found around a third of the members of the Armed Forces said they lived in damp or mouldy barracks.
Catterick Garrison, near Richmond, is the largest British Army base in the world, and has a population of around 13,000 people.
Yet in recent years, reports have claimed that there have been issues with hot water and showering facilities at some of the barracks in the base.
MPs also found around a third of the 133,000 single living accommodation spaces were not fit for purpose.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told The Yorkshire Post: “It’s unacceptable that any service person has to deal with issues with their homes, and we know that there is much more to do to upgrade and build new military accommodation across the estate for both families and Single Service personnel.
“After years of underfunding, we are investing £1.4bn in new-build single-living accommodation by 2030 and examining single-living and overseas accommodation standards across defence.
“We’ve already spent £244m on improvement works and resolved 614,000 maintenance issues in the past three years. We will continue to work hard to ensure accommodation is fit for purpose.”