Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent estimate the Department has made of the total cost of tackling the maintenance backlog across the defence estate.

The Defence estate, including the wider Built Estate, is managed and maintained through multiple contracts. We inherited a considerate backlog in maintenance across the Defence estate.

Last month we announced the Defence Housing Strategy which will modernise or upgrade over 40,000 Defence family homes, with 14,000 of these to be either rebuilt or substantially refurbished. A total investment of £9 billion over the next decade will deliver the Strategy, funded by the Government’s record uplift in defence spending. This builds on the additional £1.5 billion in this Parliament set out at the Strategic Defence Review, to rapidly address the poor state of military housing.

The Defence Housing Strategy recommended that an urgent review of Single Living Accommodation (SLA) is to be undertaken with the Defence Investment Plan set to articulate the level of investment in new and refurbished SLA over the next ten years.