It turns out that collective bargaining does work, even when not formally unionised:
It does seem a tad pretentious a Lt Col can get a 4 bedroom house with no kids but a Pvt gets a 2 bedroom house with 4 kids IIRC…
I understand perks of rank but surely your soldiers should take priority over you.
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Absolutely. “Leaders eat last”
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I bet that most of the officers understand this. But the dependapotamuses seem to have other ideas
Yeah, I was amazed reading that this morning. A married major with no kids gets a massive 4 bed house but a young NCO with 4 kids gets very little.
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I’d love to know what the officers with the unnecessarily large houses do with them. I live by myself in a 3-bed house and, even using 1 as an office and 1 as a gym, I couldn’t imagine what I’d do with a 4-bed or bigger.
Especially when they likely have access to their own office on base given their rank. And also access to on-site gym…
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it does seem odd that the MOD is the smallest it has ever been in generations yet there is a shortage of quality/acceptable housing…
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Demonstrates the absolute complacency and neglect by the MoD towards the housing of its wards. And the acceptable housing is a reflection of years of “contract to the lowest bidder” approach coupled with poor projection management, financial oversight and investment in maintenance.
Death by a thousand cuts.
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From prune where there is a thread running about service accommodation and this is from one persons house and they have difficulty in getting it repaired.
Perhaps I was wrong to post this here, and this topic needs its own thread?
There’s a lot to discuss about service accommodation and the impact of outsourcing services that this isn’t really the right place for.
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You can make your own threads remember…
Yes, but I can’t move posts.
My thought was to move all the ones made so far since my original post.
Accommodation is pretty shocking.
I’ve been very lucky with my housing. Always manage to say the right thing to the right people so repairs can be sorted quicklyish.
Worst thing was my shed door being left with a hole in for months. Ruined our old pram.
The issues pretty contentious. Should LCpl Dunce be given a 5 bed because he has no idea what condoms are? Maybe.
But should career driven Lt Col Pretentious be given a four bed because of his rank? No.
The entitlement needs to be the last thing looked at. Quality of housing and repairs contracts need to be done first.
There’s a lot of horror stories from the estate here in terms of housing repairs required.
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I only ever lived the block life, but all blocks I lived in after Phase One were already condemned. The upside of that was that I never paid for accommodation.
Those same blocks are still in use today. Given the state that they were in during 2007-2010, I dread to think what their condition is like now. And they now won’t receive any investment because the base has recently been earmarked for closure towards the end of this decade.
And look at some of the ex-forces accommodation they were wanting to house asylum seekers in. It was so bad that it was deemed not safe for human habitation in some cases. Now I don’t care what side of the asylum seeker argument you may be on, but if accommodation is being deemed not safe for humans to live in, why are we making our forces personnel live in it?!
The whole thing is horrendous. I don’t think people would really be arguing about the size/location of the housing if all the housing at all levels was of a much higher quality.
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My brother in Christ, we have no human rights. 
My block life wasn’t too bad. Apart from one Christmas where I had to live in an ISO container whilst they renovated the actual block I lived in.
Many a lonely wine and cheese mornings on night shifts as there were no windows so I didn’t see the sun on some weeks.
This is isn’t the Daily Mail comments section…
IVF, twins, etc etc. or just wanting a bigger family? With an ageing population who do you think is going to be paying your pension?!
The people that directly suffer if you shove big families in cramped homes is the children.
When you’ve got senior ranks who could quite happily live in the mess but just choose to live in these big houses because they can, at the expense of these larger families, there’s a problem.
Now, if there’s a surplus of big houses, fine, dish them out by rank. But when there’s what appears to be a shortage it irks me.
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Is there not another part here - that there have always been an “officers’ patch” of housing and a “junior ranks patch”. Traditionally the bigger houes were built on the officers’ patch. Not sure if this is still a thing, but certainly I knew a few years ago where the Officers’ houses were and where the junor ranks houses were. Just like the mess is separate, you wouldn’t want your boss living next door when you rock in at 3am after a beer, curry and a fight.
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Lived in blocks & quarters - but a long time ago; all mine was mostly to a good standard, albeit about 30 yrs behind the times for furnishings.
Visited several friends in recent years in quarters & have in-date feedback for some single accommodation (officer & otherwise). Managed to get the Officers’ Mess accommodation at Bruggen downgraded from Grade One to Grade 4 with acceptance that it was actually sub-standard (built by the Yanks in about 1957 as temporary buildings!).
However, all that has been linked to RAF accommodation - but bear in mind that even CHOM at Cranditz had to be closed down for a while due to major issues. Some of the current issues are so bad, that a civil landlord would have been in court yonks ago. To fix all that is akin to pushing 
up Mt Everest with a tea spoon! But fix it, they must.
Quarters - allocation versus entitlement has been an on / off discussion for years. I don’t think that there will a simple solution for a long time. Entitlement historically was based on the rank structure which linked to the rent paid. Can’t remember if this was based on a civilian equivalent e.g. a major / sqn ldr would be a mini-manager & if being given a rent / housing allowance from a company, this would commensurate with their rank / experience. Obviously, the higher up the food chain (stn cdr), entitlement was for a bigger quarter - again, there was some point at which formal entertainment of guests / visitors staying overnight was taken into account.
Now, having seen, shall we say, a variety of differing standards of behaviour (married & otherwise 
across the ranks / services, this is a separate area from entitlement. Certainly, it is normal today for officer / SNCOs / other ranks to work / operate in a relatively closely integrated network. However, at both ends of the scale (maybe more at the officer end?), there is reticence to live alongside those who might be at the other end of someone’s reporting chain. No, I’m not trying to link rank or claim snobbery, it’s how it is.
There is no urge to experience “how the other half live” when out of the work environment. As a “young blood” living in a house, would you like to have your senior manager living alongside keeping an (unapproving?) eye on you. On the other hand, why shouldn’t a lt col (how many years in the Army) want to have a quieter life in a larger property where he has space for guests / family members who have left the nest to visit Mum & Dad? The entitlement has always been - get the rank (which takes time of course) - get the nicer quarter.
In days gone by, compared to now, “wife of xxx” was expected to follow him around as his career progressed & be the dutiful Service spouse. Now, many spouses / partners work & I bet that at least one the “empty” bedrooms in many quarters is, by necessity, turned into an office area. I know one VSO who has had to do that just for his primary duties!
Scrap the PFI rubbish (but I doubt if that is feasible contractually), build more quarters (or facilitate other options such as suitable hirings) - & bring back families officers / unit handyman (sorry, in light of marksman badges, have to say “handyperson”!) teams who got things fixed.