New year, new housing misery for military families living in mouldy homes

A fresh wave of complaints has been made about the standard of military accommodation faced by service families and serving personnel.

Families have resorted to hitting out on social media with frustrations about broken boilers, a lack of heating or hot water and having to live in homes affected by mould.

Late last year, a serving British Army officer posted a video of the inside of his military home, showing the conditions his wife and young baby had to live in.

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The standard of housing has caused widespread anger among senior serving personnel, veterans, and politicians, who have directed their comments towards the private companies responsible for maintaining military homes and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for signing multimillion-pound contracts with the firms.

In response to the backlash, all the firms responsible for the 49,000 military homes have increased staffing levels to try and deal with the ongoing issues and say they are committed to clearing the backlog of complaints.

Last year, when dozens of housing complaints were made public, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the firms responsible for military homes to 'up their game' and said he would be speaking with them about the issues raised.

After discussing housing issues with bosses of the private firms, Mr Wallace wrote a Christmas letter to military families regarding poor housing conditions, which read: "It is, therefore, a high priority for myself and the ministerial team to address this unacceptable situation."

The 49,000 military homes in the UK are not owned by Pinnacle Group, VIVO Defence Services or Amey Plc. 

Pinnacle Group has the contract from the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), part of the MOD, to operate the National Service Centre that receives calls and emails from the families, diagnoses the issue, and then passes it to either VIVO Defence Services (if the property is in the south-east or south-west of England region), or Amey Plc (if in the central or north region) who should then complete all necessary repairs.

In March 2021, VIVO Defence Services won an £810m MOD contract and, in the same month, Pinnacle Group won a £144m MOD contract to play their part in the maintenance of military homes.

The latest examples posted in 2023 on social media appear to show new and existing issues which is has been claimed are yet to be fixed or repaired.

In a separate post, one soldier said: "Surprise surprise. Vivo haven't turned up to fix our boiler. My family are still sat in our house freezing and no hot water!!!"

This comes as an online petition titled Review MOD housing contract with Pinnacle, Amey and Vivo was launched by Laura Cummings and has already gathered 3,894 signatures.

In another post to Twitter, British Army reconnaissance soldier Ross Hopkins said: "Engineer has failed to turn up to our appointment, six days with no heating or hot water @PinnacleSF@_pinnaclegroup.

"Tracked the engineer, apparently he's been at the end of my street all afternoon, there isn't a van and hasn't been at all. Are service families a joke to you?

"@_pinnaclegroup@PinnacleSF the £1 compensation per 24hrs for total loss of heating is comedy gold. I have to wait up to 20 days for a decision to receive lovetoshop vouchers. How about cover my electricity for the duration of the loss of heating? @ArmySgtMajor@PinnacleSF.

"This is after being told initially the urgent job was aimed to be completed within 48hrs. Surely there is there a legal obligation to us as tenants? If not, why? @ArmySgtMajor@BWallaceMP."

In response to the thousands of previous complaints waiting to be fixed, 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."

A VIVO Defence spokesperson said: "Every armed service family we support across the 29,000 military homes we look after has the right to expect a good level of service and to know where they live is warm, safe and well-maintained.

"This is incredibly important to us and we are making good progress resolving the issues some families experienced during the recent severe cold weather.

"We are working closely with Pinnacle, who operate the national service centre, to ensure we deliver a consistent and reliable service in the regions where we operate.  We are also in constant contact with the Ministry of Defence and their representatives."

Meanwhile, a Pinnacle spokesperson said: "Pinnacle's role is to take calls from families, and raise the repair job, which is then transferred to the relevant MOD repairs and maintenance provider, either Amey in the central and northern regions, or VIVO Defence in the south-east and south-west.

"The period of prolonged cold weather resulted in a significant increase in calls to our national service centre, and average call wait times lengthened.

"We apologise to families for the inconvenience this has caused. We increased call handlers from 38 people to 60 people in December to meet the increased demand and are bringing in more staff to help drive down wait times."

An Amey spokesperson said: "Unfortunately, some older military housing can experience damp, particularly in winter.

"We are very aware of the impact this can have on residents and their families and make it a priority to respond and provide remedial action quickly once issues are flagged to us by Pinnacle.

"To help us deliver an effective service we are currently increasing the number of maintenance response staff we have."

They added: "We would encourage any service personnel who have maintenance requirements to contact the Pinnacle customer service centre so they can be resolved quickly."