The MOD failed to engage with Forces families
SIR – The Ministry of Defence’s decision to pause the new accommodation offer for serving personnel (report, February 27) is welcome. The policy was based on results from a Future Accommodation Model pilot project that was poorly designed and badly executed, with an insignificant sample size.
In future, the MOD needs to engage families more in policy-making to ensure that the right questions are asked and the right solutions provided, especially when it comes to the fundamental issue of accommodation.
Having lived in military housing for more than 20 years, I can assure you that a military quarter is more than just a house; it is a community providing wellbeing, security and reassurance for serving personnel and their families. This community is essential for the Armed Forces’ resilience and their overall operational capability.
Allyson Arnold
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Nineteen of my 23 years’ service were as a married soldier and in those 19 years we had 13 different married quarters in four different countries.
My penultimate posting in the mid-1990s was an exchange post with the Canadian forces. At the Canadian base we lived on, quarters were allocated by family requirements, not rank (with notable exceptions for the most senior officers). This did not appear to create any problems. The key may have been that the housing and furnishing were of a good standard for everybody, unlike my experience in Mod-provided housing in Britain, where I saw some junior officers accommodated quite palatially while some soldiers were living in housing that had been formally condemned.
My final posting back in Britain was at a unit where the military component had reduced and it was no longer viable to maintain separate married “patches”. All married officers and soldiers therefore lived in what had been the officers’ area. Again, this worked well, and as the senior warrant officer in the unit, I do not recall the commanding officer raising any concerns over “integration”.
It is a pity that the current debate is centred on potential loss of privilege for officers rather than the general poor standard of service housing.
Richard Scott
Kirkbride, Cumbria