Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many houses rented by his Department are currently unoccupied.

The majority of Service Family Accommodation properties are leased from Annington Homes Ltd. The remainder are either Ministry of Defence (MOD) owned or leased from other providers. The Department has approximately 8,759 void Service Family Accommodation properties in the UK as of March 2018.

Approximately half of the total number of void properties have been identified for disposal, or are being retained to ensure houses are available to meet rebasing plans as part of the Defence Estate Optimisation Programme and the Army Basing Programme. The MOD aims to keep 10% temporarily void to allow for major upgrade work and routine movements in and out of properties.