12 August 2016 | Herpreet Kaur Grewal

newsdesk@fm-world.co.uk

Last month the House of Commons Pubklic Accounts Committee published a report concluding that the Ministry of Defence and its contractor were “badly letting down service families” by providing them with poor accommodation. Herpreet Kaur Grewal reports on the evidence, and speaks to those involved.

Last month the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published a report concluding that the Ministry of Defence and its contractor were “badly letting down service families” by providing them with poor accommodation and often leaving them without basic requirements.

The private sector provider with responsibility for maintaining some 50,000 Service Family Accommodation, through the National Housing Prime contract, and for administering the charging system for that accommodation is CarillionAmey. The committee described the firm’s performance as “unacceptable” and agreed that it was right for the MoD to be considering terminating the contract.

In some cases, warns the committee, frustration with the failure to carry out repairs “may be driving some highly trained personnel to leave the military, wasting the investment made in them”.

Among its recommendations to the government, the committee says the MoD must explain what it will do to improve the way it consults with families “when setting policies and agreeing contracts that will impact upon their lives”.

It should also ensure that CarillionAmey or any other contractor “meets or exceeds” its estate maintenance obligations for the life of the contract. Steps must be taken to ensure that contractors are capable of delivering the agreed service at the agreed price, and that an effective penalty/incentive regime should be put in place. It was also recommended that the MoD write to the committee when a decision is made whether or not to continue the deal with CarillionAmey, setting out the evidence on performance supporting this decision. 

Soundbites

Daniel Easthope, managing director of CarillionAmey, said: “Our housing service is now performing well against key contract indicators following the delivery of an aggressive improvement plan, and we are sustaining that performance. We are also working closely with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation to improve service families’ experience by delivering improvements to the housing stock and through engaging with service families and the family federations to discuss how we can further support their needs.”

Bill Mahon, director, RAF Families Federation
“The new contract offered excellent customer service. That hasn’t really materialised. For those who have been involved – not everybody needs their house maintained all the time – there is a sense of frustration and anger about the way that some of them have been treated. Some of them have been treated appallingly.”

Complaints log

Low rank
Written evidence from service families highlight the nature and variety of concerns they had about their accommodation:

1 Poor cleanliness when moving in:  A service family described how they had returned from overseas to their allocated house to find that the property was dirty and had been poorly maintained and that the contractor was reluctant and slow to respond to complaints.

2 Poor customer service: The wife of a serviceman complained that despite hours of phone calls, technicians had not solved her housing problems and her family was living in damp and mouldy accommodation.

3 Families left without basic facilities: A service family was left without hot water and heating for several weeks, despite having a seven-week-old baby and a four-year-old. The contractor was slow to repair the boiler, and failed to co-ordinate plumbers and roofers to install the new one.

4 Prolonged disruption to family life: A serviceman told the PAC that a lack of routine maintenance to his family’s home resulted in “significant structural damage that took over a year to repair”, during which time the family did not have adequate facilities to live in and time allowed to conduct a repair was “generally inadequate, and long-winded and inefficient”.

5 Concerns about how properties have been assessed for rent: A service family told the Public Accounts Committee that they received what they considered “an inconsistent banding in comparison to their neighbours and found out through a Freedom of Information request that the Combined Accommodation Assessment System survey was never conducted on their house”, so they were paying more rent for their house, which was in worse condition than others nearby.