SAC0061

Written evidence submitted by Mrs Rosie Bucknall

 

6. What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Future Accommodation Model? How successful was the Future Accommodation Model pilot and what should the MOD take forward to include in the new accommodation offer? 

 

About the author: 

 

I have been married to a serving Army Officer (Captain) for two years. We have been living in service accommodation in South West England for just over a year. I come from a non-military family and grew up in the suburbs, so living in the countryside and residing on an Army ‘patch’ has taken some getting used to. I am pleased to report that one year in, I couldn’t be happier with the life we have created here and the friends we have made.  

 

Whilst I am certainly newer than most to the specifics of service accommodation, the couple of days of personal time I have spent familiarising myself with the New Accommodation Offer (formerly the Future Accommodation Model) has surfaced a number of concerns that border on incredulity.  

 

I should also mention that I am a Programme Manager by trade. Having built the majority of my career in the private sector, I have entered the public sector in a contract capacity in recent years. My current role is leading two strategic projects for the UK’s healthcare regulator, the Care Quality Commission. As an arm’s length body, we have a direct relationship with DHSC and DLUHC. The pressures of leading a publicly funded programme involving Ministerial scrutiny are not lost on me. 

 

On 25th October, I took an unpaid day off work and made the four hour round trip in order to attend the New Accommodation Offer (NAO) roadshow event at HMS Collingwood in person. It quickly became apparent, from the responses to the recorded questions and my direct conversations with members of the NAO Programme team afterwards, how little basic due diligence was in place, particularly given the scale and significance of this accommodation policy. I find it deeply concerning that in spite of significant senior oversight, nobody else appears to have spotted these glaring gaps and errors. 

 

If rolled out as planned, it is abundantly clear this accommodation policy will only damage further the trusted relationship between Army Officers and the institution they serve. The delicate social contract upon which the Army is balanced may be broken irretrievably if NAO is not reconsidered.

 

It is all too easy to get lost in the specifics of policy documentation or to use acronyms to obfuscate its true impact. Therefore, I have attempted to put into plain English how I may explain to any ordinary member of the public the significance and implications of this reduction in housing allowance.

 

I am comfortable for my submission to be published and I waive my right to anonymity. I look forward to hearing your reflections on my recent observations and remain available should you require any additional insight or should you wish to speak directly.  

 

 

 

 

A spouse’s perspective on the New Accommodation Offer 

 

Army life: a unique social contract

 

I don’t come from a military family and if I’m honest the realities of becoming an Army wife have been something of a learning curve in recent years.  

 

Most ordinary people don’t know much if anything about the realities of Army life and military families’ life either. 

 

Now being on the other side, I can tell you this.  

 

The whole of the Armed Forces (and its ability to operate as an effective fighting force) is balanced on a precarious social contract.  

 

The social contract is broadly this… 

 

Compared with nearly all other career paths, you will never earn particularly much in the Armed Forces. You will be expected to work long hours (10pm or 1am finishes and 24 hour days not uncommon) and weekends. You will be expected to move around the UK or abroad every 18-24 months. You will also be deployed on operations for 6-9 months at a time and your partner will live alone or as a single parent during this time in your absence. Your job will at some points involve life or death situations and there is a remote but not nonexistent possibility that you may be seriously harmed or killed in action.  

 

So, not a great proposition, we get it. BUT you are serving your country. So we will at least make sure you and your family are provided with affordable, decent and stable rented housing so the family unit remains intact and so they can support you in your Army career. If you choose to and are able to have children, we will also find ways to make sure they can have some form of continuity of education and aren’t disrupted by having to move schools every two years.  

 

So a salary that isn’t great and a load of other heavy stuff to deal with, but housing and education for my family. Got it.  

 

The problem is, this social contract is being eroded. ‘The offer’, as those serving call it, has been persistently degraded over recent decades, with salaries and boarding education allowance now a fraction of what they used to be, in real terms, compared with my parents in law’s generation.

 

…And now they are dismantling our access to decent housing. 

 

For officers and their family members, who have made personal and financial sacrifices for ten or twenty years, this is utter betrayal. 

 

The proposed ‘improvements’ of the New Accommodation Offer

 

What is it the MoD are trying to do to housing? 

 

They are removing rank-based entitlement for housing (a decent size family home). 

 

Soldiers are already entitled to subsidised rented housing based on need (family size). This means that more junior ranks aren’t penalised if they have children.  

 

Officers are currently entitled to subsidised rented housing in line with rank rather than family size. My husband and I are currently entitled to a three-bed house. If he continues to progress, he would soon be eligible for a four-bed house.  

 

Under the ‘New Accommodation Offer’, they are removing this rank-based entitlement and changing it to needs based entitlement. 

 

Under the ‘New Accommodation Offer’, unless I push out two or more children by next March (unrealistic perhaps, considering I am not currently pregnant), we will only be eligible for a two-bed property (doesn’t have to be a house, we could be squeezed into a small flat). 

 

Perhaps this seems fair, given that it’s currently just the two of us and our hairy lurcher. But please know my husband and I are planning to start a family. There are no guarantees in life, but we would be delighted if we could have two or three children. And we are creating what we hope will be a family home before too long.  

 

Please also note the Army estate is crumbling and houses are very often damp and filled with mould.  So, the size of the house is pretty much the only guarantee about it.  

 

There is no doubt we would be negatively impacted by this policy. But it gets even worse for many others… 

 

What about my friend with a four-year-old and two large dogs (on the expectation they would always be eligible for a three-bed house at least) who is planning for moving their family 350 miles north next summer? Under this policy their eligibility would reduce to a two-bed property - a reduction in space (sq/m) of almost 40%.  

 

No room for any friends or family to visit and offer support when her husband is deployed then.   

 

No room for her to keep up the remote working job she has secured for herself to keep the family budget afloat.  

 

I suppose it’s time to start selling off those sentimental possessions that afforded some feeling of home when you are in a mouldy, magnolia box miles away from everyone you know.  

 

Or what about another family I know, who after 20 years of hard work to support the husband reaching the rank of Colonel, will have their eligibility reduced by a third from 155 sq/m to 95 sq/m, simply because of how many children they chose to and were able to have? 

 

Or what about the late entry officers we know, who, having been so successful in their careers as soldiers, promote into the officer ranks, and under this policy are now no longer able to house their young adult children, who don’t count as family members once they are 18 and leave education? I guess that’s Christmas cancelled

 

Or what about those who don’t have children at all? 

 

What about the married couples we know who would dearly love to have a house filled with children, but devastatingly, can’t? With 1 in 7 UK couples facing infertility, this is not a small number. Being forced to downsize into a relative rabbit hutch is the ultimate humiliation to heap onto the years of heartbreak. 

 

What about those who choose not to have children (or those who only meet their life partner after ‘child-bearing age’) who in spite of the years and years of hard work to build a successful career, will have to live in a much smaller house than their peers, despite working just as hard in exceptionally demanding roles? 

 

What about the same sex couples who may indeed wish to grow a family, but face a more difficult and prolonged road to make that a reality?  

 

To recap, under this New Accommodation Offer…. 

 

 

 

 

*(who must be under 18 years old and/or in full time education to qualify)

 

A policy that tells us we had better crank up our ovaries as the only way to avoid losing out is not a policy fit for the modern world.  

 

 

To add insult to injury, it would appear the whole of the Army is being gaslit by the New Accommodation Offer programme team, who are standing up on stage in Brize Norton, Catterick and Portsmouth trying to tell us this initiative, this reduction in entitlement, is a good thing.  

 

We are being told it’s an inclusive thing, even though it discriminates against those who don’t or can’t have children.  

 

Have I missed something here? 

 

‘New’ doesn’t always mean better. Therefore, until MoD can quantifiably prove otherwise, I feel obligated to refer to this policy as the Worse Accommodation Offer.  

 

Defence leadership appear intent on self-destruction

 

At the HMS Collingwood roadshow event I attended, it was announced that this policy will be implemented in March 2024. On what basis, I ask, given the obvious flaws of the pilot evaluation methodology?

 

The policy itself will only be published just before Christmas, less than three months before it becomes reality. Yet what I find more concerning is the intention to blindly press on, apparently without completing any kind of fully quantified impact assessment.

 

The very scant evidence shared verbally by the programme team does indicate it will negatively impact officers and that the negative impacts get worse the more senior you are, i.e. the roles most difficult to replace if people get so worn down, they leave.  

 

It is abundantly clear that Army officers are the worst affected cohort, given the Army is expected to be more nationally mobile than the Navy or RAF, given that commanders rightly place a premium on accompanied service in order to enhance the morale, cohesion and fighting power of their units, and given that officers are expected to move much more frequently than soldiers who can remain with their unit for up to 12 years.  

 

On a poll the military officers’ families rapidly pulled together themselves, 78% of the 342 respondents said that if the New Accommodation Offer does come in as planned next March, they will leave.  

 

My husband is fifth generation Army. Being a military officer is a fundamental part of his identity. He has spent ten years serving and completed tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He loves his job and also happens to be pretty good at it too. He would arguably be one of the most hard pressed to turn his back on a military career and leave. 

 

But we are very clear that if it no longer makes sense for us as a family for him to stay in, he will do so.  

 

How ironic that the token catchphrase for this programme, spouted all too often by its custodians, is ‘to recruit and retain the best talent’. Army officers, whether direct or late entry, are highly qualified, highly capable and highly employable individuals with responsibilities first and foremost to their families. Army officers are by no means dependent on whatever crumbs the MoD deems them worthy to receive. In the wider civilian talent market, many well paid opportunities await. 

 

Dumbing down the Army’s accommodation offer simply provides another reason for talented officers to leave and another reason why talented potential officers will not even consider the Forces as a viable employment option that could meet their ambitions and expectations for themselves and their families. 

 

Do those responsible for this programme not understand that the Army is in such dire straits already (with some units struggling their way through understaffing rates nearing 50%), it really cannot afford to bleed any more of its top talent than it already has done? In this context, the New Accommodation Offer is, indeed, a spectacular act of self-harm.

 

It almost leaves me wondering if the view has already been taken somewhere higher up that Army officers are no longer required at all.

 

MoD apparently strangled’ by bureaucracy

 

What is even more curious? It would appear the only reason this New Accommodation Offer programme (and the millions and millions of public money likely spent on it since the mid-2010s) is even ‘a thing’ is all down to: a tax technicality.

 

I understand, from speaking with programme leadership, that the Future Accommodation Model was created in response to direction from Treasury and HMRC, who have told the MoD that rank based entitlements for officers would count as a taxable ‘benefit in kind’.

 

Just because something has ‘come from Treasury’ does not mean it cannot be challenged or adjusted. Defence are perfectly within their right to push back to financial Ministers, particularly if the initial instruction provided is generic to civilians, and especially if its implementation within a defence context would put at risk the Armed Forces’ ability to operate as intended.

 

Those in power also seem to have forgotten that we have an Armed Forces Covenant that already recognises the need for exceptions and exemptions given, I quote, the ‘unique obligations of, and sacrifices made by, the Armed Forces’.  

 

As stated on their website: 

 

‘The Armed Forces Covenant is a pledge that together we acknowledge and understand that those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, should be treated with fairness and respect in the communities, economy and society they serve with their lives.’ 

 

It’s pretty simple. If the usual tax rules do not factor in the unique service and sacrifice Army families offer up to their country, the legislation can and should be changed to ensure it is fit for purpose.

 

An institution that suffocates its own people

 

Please be reminded, the Armed Forces is one of the only professions forbidden from striking. No serving officer or soldier can speak to the press. It is somewhat staggering that the current Defence Secretary himself, Grant Shapps, attempted to maintain banning all serving personnel from submitting evidence to this very Defence Select Committee Service Accommodation Sub-Committee (a decision only partially reversed at the eleventh hour, with serving personnel still banned from commenting on matters pertaining to policy, no matter how personal its impact). Thankfully, at present, there is no gagging order that applies to military spouses and family members.

 

Fear of reprisal is huge. There’s no competitor to move to if you’ve had enough, remember. Officers with dissenting views do not feel able to speak up in fear of being singled out for non-promotion. The problem is, this goes all the way to the top, where the most senior roles in the Army can be removed from post if they do anything other than toe the political line… The most senior roles who are supposed to stand up for and protect this social contract. 

 

Secretary of State for Defence, Chief of General Staff, Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Defence People… as individuals who I understand are so often the most vocal about significant policy developments, their silence on this policy, given its reach, is deafening.  

 

No Army Officer families = No Army

 

All evidence above would indicate those at the helm of this work have forgotten the delicate ecosystem through which the Army can operate as an effective fighting force. 

 

It would appear from their actions that they have forgotten the precarious social contract on which the whole Army is balanced. And that eroding that social contract to nothing has severe ramifications for the Army’s ability to recruit and retain suitably skilled leadership roles that enable it to operate. 

 

If you care about the conflict in Ukraine and our ability to stand up to aggressors,  

 

If you care about the Israel/Palestine conflict and the climb in volatile ground warfare, 

 

If you care about having a mobile and effective UK Armed Forces capability, 

 

You need to truly grasp the ramifications of this accommodation policy and you need to care about the outcome.

 

 

The New Accommodation Offer is a disastrous proposition which, intended or unintended, will do untold damage to the Armed Forces. It further erodes the Covenant between the Nation and its Service personnel, all at a time when morale is fragile after decades of decline and under-investment in people. The very people who are, please remember, the life blood of the Nation’s Defence capability.

Please act now. Halt the roll-out. Rethink.

 

31 October 2023