End the military’s £8bn property scandal today, Rishi Sunak, so not to put Armed Forces and taxpayers at unnecessary risk – Helen Liddell

Helen Liddell is chair of Annington Homes and a former Cabinet minister.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.

THE Ministry of Defence (MoD) has declared its intention to expropriate two privately owned homes – homes rented out to services families – back into state ownership.

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If successful with these two, they intend to expropriate a further 38,000 homes. These properties were sold to Annington in 1996 in a highly public and hotly contested auction.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.

As the Chair of Annington, I am deeply concerned at the Government’s decision to simply rip up a long-standing agreement.

As a former Economic Secretary to the Treasury, I am also shocked that the Government is apparently happy to risk £8bn to speculate on the property market, at a time when public finances are under historic pressure.

If the Government were to succeed in expropriating these properties, it is of course the UK taxpayer who will have to pay that £8bn – a course of action suggested by bankers at UK Government Investments (UKGI).

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Housing purchase and property speculation is not a sensible use of such a huge proportion of the defence budget, particularly when the country faces so many challenges. It is no surprise that many

Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured during a visit to Catterick Garrison in 2020 to view military housing is today urged to halt a £8bn property gamble over properties rented to the Army and service families.

senior military figures see this as a wrong-headed priority.

For the MoD, £8bn is nearly a fifth of the annual defence budget or the equivalent of two new aircraft carriers, 1,900 new Challenger tanks, or 72 Typhoon fighter jets.

For other departments, it could fund 11 new hospitals, eight years of free school meals or, a much-deserved pay rise for public sector workers.

That money could, clearly, be better spent.

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I was the Economic Secretary to the Treasury at the start of the last Labour government and I know how hard the Treasury works to make proper value for money assessments of different policy proposals.

I cannot believe anyone at the Treasury would see this as a sensible financial move.

In these difficult times of ever-increasing national debt, the logical next step for the Government would be to drop this expensive scheme and instead put this money to good use.

Under the terms of the 1996 agreement with Annington, the MoD insisted on full responsibility for the upkeep of service family homes.

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Despite our offers to help, over the years the MoD has allowed many of these homes to fall into appalling disrepair, with service personnel and their families often living in intolerable conditions.

The MoD leases over 3,000 homes from Annington in Yorkshire.

Over half of those – 1,794 houses – are in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s constituency of Richmond.

I do not believe the Chancellor could justify such spending to his constituents, including the military families who live there. They deserve to see their housing conditions improved. And we believe Annington can help in that endeavour.

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The need is urgent. Only half of personnel living in Service accommodation are satisfied with the overall standard of their homes.

Nearly 70 per cent were unhappy with the response to requests for maintenance and repair work.

Just this week, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation has announced that it will need to spend £73m in improvements to combat damp and mould in service family accommodation.

Our armed forces deserve better.

We have made an offer to the MoD that, rather than spend vast sums on a fruitless legal battle which we are confident in winning, we will create a fund worth £105m to improve service family housing so that our service families are no longer forced to live in sub-standard accommodation.

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There is still time for the Government to see sense and put an end to this expensive and ill-thought-out scheme. We can then work together to improve the homes our military families live in.

As the Government is aware, Annington believe we have a very strong legal case against expropriation.

Both we and the Government have been warned any legal battle would take many years to resolve and result in enormous legal fees for both sides.

Annington owns over 38,000 homes, and legal advice suggests that each would have to be considered separately. There is no economic sense in this scheme whatsoever, whoever wins.

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The proposed expropriation has already been defined as anti-business and this, together with the pressure on public finances, should give the Government pause for thought.

The Government should look after its service personnel and their families, not speculate on the property market.

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