SAC0007

Written evidence submitted anonymously

I have served as an officer in the RAF since […] and lived in both DIO’s own UK housing stock and properties they have rented on our behalf overseas. I think the cause is a long-standing, deep-rooted inability to either replace ageing stock with modern homes or find the sums needed to maintain quarters that have been neglected over decades. The MoD’s chicken have come home to roost; an immediate solution is now beyond the DIO’s funds and preparedness to act. It will be for someone else to present the totality of what faces Service families but perhaps examples are useful to support points you’ll already have identified or show trends beyond my own personal experience.

It is disingenuous for DIO to present glossy brochures about being ‘decent homes plus’ when they are anything but. They claim to reflect the Local Housing regulations but reading through the source regulation, it is clear that the DIO’s property frequently does not meet the standards. Moreover, there is no local authority to hold them to account as would be the case for private and other local landlords. DIO’s public face always shows their ‘new’ properties and ‘good news’ stories but neglects to show the disgusting conditions that many others have to suffer.

My housing has often been well below acceptable standards. When at Boscombe Down  […], we lived in a house that was constantly damp; pipes or tanks perpetually leaked and mould grew freely in the bathroom and around windows from condensation that collected in pools on window cills. It was possible to see daylight through window frames. Almost every ceiling in the house had water damage and water itself ran down the edges of doorframes and around electrical fittings. Their plan was to drill large (c. 4”) holes in the downstairs walls to ventilate the place. As the payer of the energy bill, naturally, I refused! At one point, we discovered that someone had connected the boiler overflow to the roof gutter and, having so neglected drainage, our larder flooded with rainwater destroying our food. After 2 years of bitter argument, rent was retrospectively changed to reflect the state of the house. However, the sum offered went nowhere near compensating for my family living in horrible conditions for 2 years. Most people don’t have the tenacity to fight the DIO’s well-rehearsed playbook. Before complaints are properly heard, there are hoops to jump through that are simply obstacles to resolution, not least that complaints about grading must be heard within 28 days of moving in. How can you tell is a property suffers from damp and a leaking heating system when one moves in in August? (In fairness, I understand that attempts have been made since to remedy that deadline). DIO probably figure that complainants will simply give up or be posted elsewhere and no longer care.

This next bit is important; I understand that DIO (or their contractors) changed data recorded on houses around Boscombe Down and consequently, work was not undertaken or appropriate rent charged for properties. How inadvertent that was is for someone else to decide and as I think some of this might be legally challenged and so I will go no further.

The way that DIO responds to repair requests, queries, complaints and criticism is very poor. We frequently saw contractors deliberately sent to homes without the time or resource to resolve issues (some even of a completely different trade to the problem presented) in order to claim that they have visited within the required timescale. Problems remained unresolved and the waste of my wife’s time waiting in – and mine, when I was kept from doing my defence job – was extremely frustrating. This allowed DIO to claim service standards were being met when I can be pretty sure they weren’t. The good tradesmen who came were horribly embarrassed by it; the bad ones were uncaring, unthinking and rude.  Subject Access and FOI Requests are routinely treated with contempt..

Why is there not enough money? I expect that, in the long run, the bills for old houses probably cost more than replacing them but thanks to the unique way in which Defence is funded, DIO cannot see further than their own noses. So they pour good money after bad; it is not spent wisely. Contractors appear to be able to charge unreasonable sums for the simplest of jobs. They seem to me to be unable to monitor these contracts effectively. One contractor admitted to me that he used to put up many more fence posts with smaller panels around gardens than were needed because he could charge much significantly more for additional posts than were required by large panels. And what of these contractors travelling to houses to merely say they had to leave again to make up the stats? Is that efficient or cost effective?

People who are not authorized to apply what intelligence they might possess inflexibly apply DIO rules. For example, on loading a removals truck to move out of a house, a dishwasher cold water feed valve had seized. This was, we were told, ‘non-urgent’ and an appointment could be made for some weeks afterwards. Of course, the choices then were to flood the house, turn off the water to the whole property at the stop cock (and not be able to clean it, resulting in charges being awarded against me), leave the dishwasher in place while the removals truck drove off or arrange for someone to fix it myself. Either way, I had better things to do than argue with Corrilian-Whatsitsname.

The DIO’s own JSP are poorly written, open to interpretation and worse, misunderstood by their own staff. LMS (who allocate properties overseas) have been shown to mis-allocate houses below entitlement to meet their own ends. They were challenged by both Service Complaint and Special to Type complaints and found wanting; while matters were resolved for those specific complainants they appear to still be making similar, inappropriate allocations to colleagues who might not know better or maybe lack the will to fight for their rights.

To close, thank you for holding the DIO’s feet to the fire. I am sure that there are good people in the organization but they seem to put far more effort in defending their (failed) reputation than actually delivering housing to Service families that is fit for purpose.

30 August 2023