Firms responsible for maintaining UK military homes slammed on social media
An Army mother says she was forced to call out an emergency plumber and pay for urgent repairs which should have been covered and repaired by a private firm.
Posting to Twitter, 'Madison' says that Pinnacle Group, the multimillion-pound property maintenance firm responsible for the upkeep of military homes, refused to prioritise her broken heating system as urgent – even though she has a newborn and a three-year-old child living in the military property.
It comes as private companies responsible for maintaining thousands of military homes – contracted by the MOD – have been slammed on social media by military families for failing to carry out urgent repairs to their homes.
Pinnacle Group is one of the service providers – in charge of the repairs of 49,000 military properties.
Mum-of-two Madison confronted the firm on Twitter, saying: "Army accommodation is a JOKE," after her heating stopped working.
Madison claims Pinnacle Group would not consider her broken heating as an emergency, and told her she would have to wait several days for the central heating to be repaired.
The company also failed to provide her with plug-in heaters while she was without heating, she said.
Pinnacle Group's website says: "If you have a young child (a child under the age of two), elderly person or someone with disabilities living in your home we will always treat loss of heating or hot water as an urgent case."
It goes on to say "if for some reason a temporary or full repair for heating and hot water loss can't be made quickly, we will work with you to ensure you and your family are kept safe".
A spokesperson for Pinnacle Group said: "Pinnacle is not responsible for the repairs, maintenance or condition and upkeep of military homes, our role is to take calls from families and raise the repair job, which is then transferred to VIVO Defence in the South East and South West, and Amey in the central and Northern regions.
"All repairs due to loss of heating in the winter are classified as urgent and, in this situation, Pinnacle would have sought to make an appointment for VIVO/Amey to attend and effect a repair within 48 hours.
"However, Pinnacle are only able to offer appointments to families where VIVO/Amey have availability to attend. In this situation, it appears that there were no appointments available from VIVO/Amey within the 48-hour period, and so the customer would have been offered the next available appointment.
"We are unable to confirm any more facts without knowledge of the customer and/or address concerned."
The statement added that VIVO/Amey are directly contracted by MOD, and have no direct relationship with Pinnacle.
Also in response, an MOD spokesperson said: "It is unacceptable that some of our personnel and their families are not receiving the level of accommodation services that they deserve and we are investigating what happened in this case with our suppliers.
"Loss of heating and hot water should be responded to as soon as possible and within 48 hours."
This has come after Labour uncovered Ministry of Defence (MOD) data, showing that more than 40% of Armed Forces personnel in Scotland are living in the lowest grade of service accommodation.
The data revealed that 1,380 military personnel were living in 'Grade 4' single living accommodation – the lowest rating given by the MOD.
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