Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to ensure that members of the armed forces and their families are not accommodated in hotels.

The Department provides entitled service personnel and their families with single living accommodation or service family accommodation (SFA) either at, or close to their normal duty station. There are near 50,000 SFA properties which are used for the needs of the armed forces.

The Department also recognises the evolving housing needs of service personnel. Work to progress the Future Accommodation Model is under way to provide a more flexible accommodation offering which remains attractive to service personnel and affordable to Defence in the future.

Hotels are only ever used in exceptional circumstances to temporarily house service personnel and their families and this exceptional use is reducing.