MoD to face questions on Annington homes deal and military housing budget
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will question officials from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on military housing and the value for money of the Annington homes deal on Thursday 10 September, at 10.00am.
In 1996, the MoD sold around 55,000 service family accommodation (SFA) properties to Annington Property Ltd. These properties were then rented back by the MoD, which also retained responsibility for managing and maintaining the properties.
In 2024, the MoD repurchased around 36,000 of the units for £6bn, at which point the MoD was paying £230m a year in rent. A recent report from the National Audit Office (NAO) estimates that the MoD is £14.5bn worse off than it would have been had it not sold the estate in 1996.
The PAC will question MoD officials on the lessons learned from the deal with Annington, and are likely to question why the MoD did not seriously consider improving its arrangements with Annington until 2019.
With much of the SFA estate in need of improvement, MPs could also seek assurances that the £9bn allocated in the Defence Investment Plan to deliver the defence housing strategy will not be siphoned off to plug funding gaps elsewhere.
The Committee may also consider if the MoD has the capacity and necessary skillset to deliver the objectives of the Defence Housing Strategy.