Recruiting in crisis

STORM: Poor military housing slammed

SQUALID military housing is putting new recruits off joining up.

Defence chiefs have fallen “woefully short”, according to the Royal United Services Institute.

It is claimed squaddies, sailors and airmen will leave in droves unless the Government deals with the problem.

The RUSI report calls for a pledge to provide good accommodation and goes on to add that Ministry of Defence plans are “woefully short on detail and methods of delivery, frustrating representatives of service families”.

Blunder

MoD bosses ran the risk of driving the next generation of would-be soldiers away from joining up unless a “coherent and detailed” housing strategy is developed.

And families should also receive “increased priority” when it comes to military housing, the report recommends.

MoD chiefs were accused of making a huge blunder when they sold off more than 55,000 service family homes in 1996. The ministry is now up to £4.2billion worse off for the sale, according to the National Audit Office.

An MoD spokeswoman said: “We are committed to providing our troops with accommodation that meets their needs and is good value.”

She added: “In the last three years, we have invested over £500million in housing and pledged a further £1.8bn through our Army basing programme to build thousands of new homes across the UK.”