Accredited official statistics

Service Family Accommodation Statistics: 2010 to 2024

Published 30 May 2024

This annual publication provides figures on the number of Service Family Accommodation properties in the UK, their condition and the number of vacant properties. Accompanying this publication, there is an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) document which includes the full set of data which underlies the figures and charts discussed in this report.

This edition provides statistics for 2010 to 2024 (as of 31 March each year), with a base year of 2000, and updates figures released in the 2023 edition of this publication, which provided statistics up to 31 March 2023.

Main Points and Trends

• On 31 March 2024 there were 47,700 Service Family Accommodation (SFA) properties in the UK, which is a decrease of 100 compared to the previous year.
• 8,600 of these properties are currently vacant (18.1% of the total), a decrease from the 9,100 properties (19.0%) as reported in 2023. There are several reasons for this vacancy rate as Service Personnel move frequently resulting in the necessity for MOD to maintain a margin of vacant properties to support Service Mobility. In addition, properties may be vacant to allow for essential repairs and modernisation, or set aside for future basing requirements or disposal, demolition, or hand back to Annington Homes Limited. MOD is committed to providing subsidised and high-quality accommodation to Forces families to support the Service Need.
• The number of SFA properties in England & Wales has decreased by 100 since the previous year, Scotland and Northern Ireland both remain roughly unchanged.
• 95.7% of UK SFA properties, for which information is available, are assessed as Decent Homes (good condition or requiring minor improvements) or Decent Homes+, a 1.0 percentage point decrease from the previous year. Properties categorised below Decent Homes Standard have not been allocated to families. This is in line with the commitment made in the Armed Forces Covenant not to allocate sub-standard properties.

Further information: [email protected]

Responsible statistician: [email protected]

Background quality report: Background quality report

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Please refer to the Supplementary tables containing all data presented in this publication.

Introduction

The provision of quality living accommodation for Service personnel and their families is managed by the MOD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO). DIO manages these properties in the UK (and some overseas locations), which includes planning targeted improvement programmes and managing future requirements.

On 1 April 2022 the Future Defence Infrastructure Services (FDIS) Accommodation contracts replaced the National Housing Prime (NHP) contract. These contracts fulfil the Defence requirement for the delivery of effective and responsive accommodation services for Service personnel and their families.

On behalf of DIO, Pinnacle Group Ltd manage the National Accommodation Management Services (NAMS) contract in the UK. Their National Service Centre is the single point of contact for requests from families living in Service Family Accommodation (SFA) including raising repair and maintenance issues, the allocation of homes and conducting move-in and move-out appointments.

Four Regional Accommodation Maintenance Services (RAMS) contracts provide statutory and mandatory checks, repair and maintenance services and the preparation of allocated homes for Service families. Amey manage the Northern and Central regions and VIVO cover the South East and South West.

Private Finance Initiative (PFI) properties are maintained by the PFI contractors while Bulk Lease Hired properties, typically on a 5-year lease from Annington Homes Limited, are managed on their behalf by Touchstone.

In areas where housing stock is unavailable, Service families will be provided with privately rented properties, known as Substitute Service Family Accommodation (SSFA). This accommodation is sourced and leased on behalf of the MOD by Mears Group Limited.

For more information about Service Family accommodation, please see the DIO Service Family accommodation website.

For more information about the latest Public Accounts Committee (PAC) focusing on Service Family Accommodation, please see the Parliament PAC website.

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Accredited Official Statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

These Accredited Official Statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in 2017. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘Accredited Official Statistics’.

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Once statistics have been designated as Accredited Official Statistics it is a statutory requirement that the Code of Practice shall continue to be observed. Further details about how this report has been developed since its confirmation as an Accredited Official Statistic can be found in the Background Quality Report.

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Service Family Accommodation Properties in the UK

The following chart shows the number of Service Family Accommodation properties between 1997 and 2024 (as of 31 March each year). For each year, numbers of properties are rounded to the nearest hundred. Key points from the graph are shown below.

Chart 1: Service Family Accommodation in the UK, 1997-2024 (as of 31 March each year)

A graph showing the number of UK permanent holdings and UK vacant holdings over time

On 31 March 2024, the MOD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation managed 47,700 UK properties, which is a decrease of 100 compared to the same time in the previous year. The total number of properties were reasonably stable between 2009 and 2021 at approximately 50,000. However, there is a longer-term decreasing trend dating back to at least the mid 1990’s. In 1997, there were 68,600 properties and since that time, there has been a decrease of approximately 31% in the total number of UK Service Family Accommodation properties.

91.5% of UK Service Family Accommodation properties are located within England & Wales, 6.6% in Scotland, and 1.9% in Northern Ireland.

8,600 UK properties were vacant on 31 March 2024 (18.1% of the total), a decrease from 9,100 properties in 2023 (19.0% of the total) and an increase on the recent low of 6,000 properties in 2011 (when approximately 12% of the total number of properties were vacant).

The DIO operates with a ‘management margin’ of 10%, in line with departmental targets to cover military personnel being posted to, or moved, between Establishments and to allow for property maintenance schedules.

There has been a decrease in vacant properties since 2023 (0.9 percentage point decrease). The vacancy rate is attributable to the significant number of planned moves that take place every year. There are also properties that are left vacant to allow for essential repairs and modernisation, disposal, demolition, or hand back to Annington Homes Limited. Properties that are situated within the security perimeter of an MOD establishment are also difficult to dispose of. It is anticipated that the number of vacant properties will decrease in the future as demand increases under the Modernised Accommodation Offer; this will see an increase in the number of personnel that are entitled to SFA.^{[footnote 1]} Additionally, support to the Afghan Relocation Assistance Programme is further reducing the number of vacant properties.

England & Wales have the lowest vacancy rate, at 17.2%, followed by Scotland (20.9%), and Northern Ireland (52.6%). The particularly high rate in Northern Ireland reflects the inability to dispose of surplus housing within the secure perimeters of the bases due to the prevailing security situation.

Detailed figures on UK permanent holdings and vacant accommodation rates can be found in the accompanying ODS document in Table 1, including splits by country.

A map showing the total number of SFA houses in the UK split by home country

A map showing the vacant rates in the UK split by home country

Condition of Service Family Accommodation in the UK

The overall condition of Service Family Accommodation is kept under regular review. The method of assessing its condition changed significantly in April 2016, when the Combined Accommodation Assessment System was introduced replacing DIO’s ‘Standard for Condition’ as the reported measure of condition. Properties are now assessed in accordance with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (formerly the Department of Communities and Local Government) ‘Decent Homes Standard’ (DHS).^{[footnote 2]} Additionally, there is an enhanced Decent Homes+ (DH+) standard that is bespoke to SFA.

Prior to 2016, the SFA standard was measured using DIO’s ‘Standard for Condition’. As of 31 March 2016, 99.5% of SFA was either Standard 1 or Standard 2. A “Decent Home” is determined by the national standard and requires SFA properties to meet all of the following four criteria:

Criterion 1: SFA meets the statutory minimum standard for housing as set out in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System;

Criterion 2: SFA is in a reasonable state of repair (assessed from the age and condition of a range of building components including walls, roofs, windows, doors, chimneys, electrics and heating systems);

Criterion 3: SFA has reasonably modern facilities and services (assessed according to the age, size and layout/location of the kitchen, bathroom and WC and any common areas for blocks of flats, and to noise insulation)

Criterion 4: SFA has a reasonable degree of thermal comfort. This is assessed using the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for measuring energy efficiency at the following thresholds:

(1) DH+ SAP 55 and above;

(2) DH SAP 54 to 39;

(3) DH- SAP 38 and below.

Condition	Decent Homes Plus (DH+)	Decent Homes (DH)	Decent Homes Minus (DH-)
Statutory minimum standard	Pass	Pass	Fail any one of the four criteria
Reasonable state of repair	Pass	Pass	Fail any one of the four criteria
Reasonably modern facilities and services	Pass enhanced standard	Pass normal standard	Fail any one of the four criteria
Thermal comfort	Energy rating Band D or above	Energy rating Band E	Energy rating Band F or below

As of 31 March 2024, Service Family Accommodation fell into the following categories (figures are rounded to the nearest hundred):

• 45,200 properties (94.7% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes or Decent Homes+:
  • 40,200 properties (84.4% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes+.
  • 4,900 properties (10.4% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes.
• 2,000 properties (4.2% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes- (or below the recommended standard).
• 500 (1.1% of the total) properties (were temporarily managed under separate arrangements from MOD and) did not have a recorded condition.

Chart 2: Condition of UK Service Family Accommodation, 2023 and 2024 (as of 31 March each year)

A graph showing the percentage split of decent homes condition in 2023 and 2024

Source Data: DIO (Accommodation)

Detailed figures on UK permanent holdings by surveyed condition can be found in Table 2.

Methodology

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is the estate expert for defence, supporting the armed forces to enable military capability by planning, building, maintaining, and servicing infrastructure. We are responsible for enabling defence people to live, work, train and deploy at home and overseas. Our vision is to equip defence with a significantly smaller, more efficient, better quality estate.

For more information, visit the Defence Infrastructure Organisation website

DIO is responsible for managing all the Service Family Accommodation (SFA) for the Royal Navy and Marines, the Army, and the Royal Air Force in the UK. DIO Accommodation manages the operations of SFA and the Head of Accommodation reports to the DIO Accommodation Director.

DIO Accommodation provides SFA for entitled Service personnel in accordance with Tri-Service Accommodation Regulations, as well as for other entitled/eligible personnel, and for core welfare purposes. SFA can also be utilised for other Defence purposes such as Single Living Accommodation.

DIO Accommodation also reports on the number of Substitute Service Family Accommodation (SSFA) properties occupied by entitled Service personnel, i.e. those who would otherwise occupy SFA were it available when and where required. As SSFA is private property, it is not part of DIO housing stock, and is provided under short term contract.

In November 1996, most of the MOD’s housing stock in England and Wales was sold to a private company, Annington Homes Limited (AHL). The homes required for Service families were then leased back on a 200-year lease, with the condition that the MOD can hand surplus properties back to AHL.

For more information on SFA, please see the DIO website.

Please see the June 2016 National Audit Office report into SFA.

Data Sources and Quality

Data on housing is provided by regional contractors to DIO, who enter it into an electronic asset register (database). Each year, data as of 31 March is extracted from this system by DIO and collated to produce the tables.

The data in these tables has been extracted from an MOD database which is reliable and there are no significant concerns regarding its accuracy. In addition to validation by DIO, the data in these tables has been subjected to a check by Government Statisticians.

Further information can be found in the Background Quality Report.

Further Information

Rounding

In this publication, figures are given to the nearest hundred and percentages to one decimal place. Where rounding has been used, totals and sub-totals have been rounded separately and so may not equal the sums of their rounded parts.

Revisions

There are no revisions to this edition.

Corrections to the published statistics will be made if errors are found, or if figures change as a result of improvements to methodology or changes to definitions. When making corrections, we will follow the Ministry of Defence Statistics Revisions and Corrections Policy. All corrected figures will be identified by the shorthand [r], and an explanation will be given for the reason and size of the revision. Corrections which would have a significant impact on the utility of the statistics will be corrected as soon as possible, by reissuing the publication. Minor errors will also be corrected, but for convenience the publication of these corrections may be timed to coincide with the next annual release.

Contact Us

This publication has been produced by the Data Exploitation team in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.

We welcome feedback on our statistical products. If you have any comments or questions about this publication or about our statistics in general, you can contact us as follows:

Data Exploitation team (DIO)

Email: [email protected]

If you require information which is not available within this or other available publications, you may wish to submit a Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to the Ministry of Defence.

If you wish to correspond by mail, our postal address is:

Data Exploitation (Accredited Statistics)
Defence Infrastructure Organisation Head Office
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WS14 9PY

For general MOD enquiries, please call: 020 7218 9000

1. Modernised Accommodation Offer: Modernised Accommodation Offer (Previously New Accommodation Offer) ↩

2. ‘A Decent Homes: Definition and guidance for implementation. Communities and Local Government June 2006: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-decent-home-definition-and-guidance ↩