Accredited official statistics

Service Family Accommodation Statistics: 2010 to 2025

Published 29 May 2025

This annual publication provides figures on the number of Service Family Accommodation properties in the UK, their condition, and the number of vacant properties. Accompanying this publication, there is an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) document which includes the full set of data which underlies the figures and charts discussed in this report.

This edition provides statistics for 2010 to 2025 (as of 31 March each year), with a base year of 2000, and updates figures released in the 2024 edition of this publication, which provided statistics up to 31 March 2024.

Main Points and Trends

• On 09 January 2025 the MOD completed a major housing deal with Annington Property Ltd. bringing more than 36,000 Service Family homes in England and Wales^{[footnote 1]} back into public ownership.

• On 31 March 2025 there were 47,600 Service Family Accommodation (SFA) properties in the UK, which is a decrease of 100 compared to the previous year.
• 8,800 of these properties are currently vacant (18.4% of the total), an increase from the 8,600 properties (18.1%) as reported in 2024. There are several reasons for this vacancy rate as Service Personnel move frequently resulting in the necessity for MOD to maintain a margin of vacant properties to support Service Mobility. In addition, properties may be vacant to allow for essential repairs and modernisation, or set aside for future basing requirements, disposal, or demolition.
• The number of SFA properties in Scotland have decreased by 100 compared to the previous year. England & Wales, and Northern Ireland have all remained roughly unchanged from the previous year.
• 96.8% of UK SFA properties, for which information is available, are assessed as Decent Homes (good condition or requiring minor improvements) or Decent Homes+, a 1.0 percentage point increase from the previous year. In line with policy, properties categorised below Decent Homes Standard should not be allocated to families. This is in line with the commitment made in the Armed Forces Covenant not to allocate sub-standard properties.

Further information: DIODEx-GeospatialAndAnalytics@mod.gov.uk

Responsible statistician: Analysis-ChiefStatsOffice@mod.gov.uk

Background quality report: Background quality report

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Please refer to the Supplementary tables containing all data presented in this publication.

Introduction

The provision of quality living accommodation for Service personnel and their families is managed by the MOD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO). DIO manages these properties in the UK (and some overseas locations), which includes planning targeted improvement programmes and managing future requirements.

On 09 January 2025 the MOD completed a major housing deal with Annington Property Ltd. bringing more than 36,000 Service Family homes in England and Wales^{[footnote 2]} back into public ownership.

This deal enables the first steps to be taken to fix the long-term decline in the condition of Armed Forces’ housing. DIO’s priority is to provide Service Families with better quality housing and, by regaining ownership of these properties, begin a programme of redevelopment and to improve the lived experience for Service families.  

Work on a new Defence Housing Strategy has begun, with plans for publication later in 2025. Key objectives of the strategy include: a generational renewal of Armed Forces accommodation; new opportunities for forces homeownership; and better use of MOD land to support the delivery of affordable homes for families across Britain. The development of the strategy is being supported by an independent review panel of housing experts to ensure the Defence Housing Strategy meets the needs of Service personnel and families.

DIO oversee five Future Defence Infrastructure Services accommodation contracts that deliver housing services to Service Personnel and their families.

On behalf of DIO, Pinnacle Group Ltd manage the National Accommodation Management Services (NAMS) contract in the UK. Their National Service Centre is the single point of contact for requests from families living in Service Family Accommodation (SFA) including raising repair and maintenance issues, the allocation of homes and conducting move-in and move-out appointments.

Four Regional Accommodation Maintenance Services (RAMS) contracts provide statutory and mandatory checks, repair and maintenance services and the preparation of allocated homes for Service families. Amey manage the Northern and Central regions and VIVO cover the South East and South West.

Private Finance Initiative (PFI) properties are maintained by the PFI contractors, while Bulk Lease Hire properties are managed by Touchstone.

In areas where housing stock is unavailable, Service families will be provided with privately rented properties, known as Substitute Service Family Accommodation (SSFA). This accommodation is sourced and leased on behalf of the MOD by Mears Group Limited.

For more information about Service Family accommodation, please see the DIO Service Family accommodation website.

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These Accredited Official Statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in 2017. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘Accredited Official Statistics’.

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Service Family Accommodation Properties in the UK

The following chart shows the number of Service Family Accommodation properties between 1997 and 2025 (as of 31 March each year). For each year, numbers of properties are rounded to the nearest hundred. Key points from the graph are shown below.

Chart 1: Service Family Accommodation in the UK, 1997-2025 (as of 31 March each year)

A graph showing the number of UK permanent holdings and UK vacant holdings over time.

Source Data: DIO (Accommodation)

On 31 March 2025, the MOD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation owned and managed 47,600 UK properties, which is a decrease of 100 compared to the same time in the previous year. The total number of properties was reasonably stable between 2009 and 2021 at approximately 50,000. However, there is a longer-term decreasing trend dating back to at least the mid 1990’s. In 1997, there were 68,600 properties and since that time, there has been a decrease of approximately 30.5% in the total number of UK Service Family Accommodation properties.

91.6% of UK Service Family Accommodation properties are located within England & Wales, 6.5% in Scotland, and 1.9% in Northern Ireland.

8,800 UK properties were vacant on 31 March 2025 (18.4% of the total), up from 8,600 properties in 2024 (18.1% of the total) and an increase on the recent low of 6,000 properties in 2011 (when approximately 12% of the total number of properties were vacant). A proportion of vacant properties are unavailable for allocation due to a requirement for refurbishment work.

The DIO operates with a ‘management margin’ of 10%, in line with departmental targets to cover military personnel being posted to, or moved, between establishments and to allow for property maintenance schedules.

There has been an increase in the number of vacant properties since 2024 (0.3 percentage point increase). The vacancy rate is dynamic and is attributable to the significant number of planned moves that take place every year. There are also properties that are left vacant to allow for essential repairs and modernisation, disposal, or demolition. Properties that are situated within the security perimeter of an MOD establishment are also difficult to dispose of. It is anticipated that the number of vacant properties will decrease in the future as demand is expected to increase under the Modernised Accommodation Offer; this will see an increase in the number of personnel that are entitled to SFA^{[footnote 3]}. Support to the Afghan Resettlement Programme has reduced the number of vacant properties. The Housing Review Panel is reviewing the demand for Service Family Accommodation to determine whether any changes are required to the management margin in the future.

England & Wales have the lowest vacancy rate, at 17.4%, followed by Scotland (21.8%), and Northern Ireland (57.0%). The particularly high rate in Northern Ireland reflects the inability to dispose of surplus housing within the secure perimeters of the bases due to the prevailing security situation.

Detailed figures on UK permanent holdings and vacant accommodation rates can be found in the accompanying ODS document in Table 1, including splits by country.

A map showing the total number of SFA houses in the UK split by home country.

A map showing the vacant rates in the UK split by home country.

Condition of Service Family Accommodation in the UK

The overall condition of Service Family Accommodation is kept under regular review. The method of assessing its condition changed significantly in April 2016, when the Combined Accommodation Assessment System was introduced replacing DIO’s ‘Standard for Condition’ as the reported measure of condition. Properties are now assessed in accordance with the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (formerly the Department of Communities and Local Government) ‘Decent Homes Standard’ (DHS)^{[footnote 4]}. Additionally, there is an enhanced Decent Homes+ (DH+) standard that is bespoke to SFA.

Prior to 2016, the SFA standard was measured using DIO’s ‘Standard for Condition’. As of 31 March 2016, 99.5% of SFA was either Standard 1 or Standard 2. A “Decent Home” is determined by the national standard and requires SFA properties to meet all of the following four criteria:

Criterion 1: SFA meets the statutory minimum standard for housing as set out in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System;

Criterion 2: SFA is in a reasonable state of repair (assessed from the age and condition of a range of building components including walls, roofs, windows, doors, chimneys, electrics and heating systems);

Criterion 3: SFA has reasonably modern facilities and services (assessed according to the age, size and layout/location of the kitchen, bathroom and WC and any common areas for blocks of flats, and to noise insulation)

Criterion 4: SFA has a reasonable degree of thermal comfort. This is assessed using the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for measuring energy efficiency at the following thresholds:

(1) DH+ SAP 55 and above;

(2) DH SAP 54 to 39;

(3) DH- SAP 38 and below.

Condition	Decent Homes Plus (DH+)	Decent Homes (DH)	Decent Homes Minus (DH-)
Statutory minimum standard	Pass	Pass	Fail any one of the four criteria
Reasonable state of repair	Pass	Pass	Fail any one of the four criteria
Reasonably modern facilities and services	Pass enhanced standard	Pass normal standard	Fail any one of the four criteria
Thermal comfort	Energy rating Band D or above	Energy rating Band E	Energy rating Band F or below

As of 31 March 2025, Service Family Accommodation fell into the following categories (figures are rounded to the nearest hundred):

• 45,500 properties (95.5% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes or Decent Homes+:
  • 40,700 properties (85.5% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes+.
  • 4,800 properties (10.0% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes.
• 1,500 properties (3.2% of the total) were rated as Decent Homes- (or below the minimum standard).
• 600 (1.3% of the total) properties (were temporarily managed under separate arrangements from MOD and) did not have a recorded condition.

Chart 2: Condition of UK Service Family Accommodation, 2024 and 2025 (as of 31 March each year)

A graph showing the percentage split of decent homes condition in 2024 and 2025.

Source Data: DIO (Accommodation)

Detailed figures on UK permanent holdings by surveyed condition can be found in Table 2.

Methodology

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is the estate expert for defence, supporting the armed forces to enable military capability by planning, building, maintaining, and servicing infrastructure. We are responsible for enabling defence people to live, work, train and deploy at home and overseas. Our vision is to equip defence with a significantly smaller, more efficient, better quality estate.

For more information, visit the Defence Infrastructure Organisation website

DIO is responsible for managing all the Service Family Accommodation (SFA) for the Royal Navy and Marines, the Army, and the Royal Air Force in the UK. DIO Accommodation provides SFA for entitled Service personnel in accordance with tri-Service Accommodation Regulations, as well as for other entitled/eligible personnel, and for core welfare purposes. SFA can also be utilised for other Defence purposes such as Single Living Accommodation.

DIO Accommodation also reports on the number of Substitute Service Family Accommodation (SSFA) properties occupied by entitled Service personnel, i.e. those who would otherwise occupy SFA were it available when and where required. As SSFA is private property, it is not part of DIO housing stock, and is provided under short term contract.

On 09 January 2025 the MOD completed a major housing deal with Annington Property Ltd bringing more than 36,000 Service Family homes in England and Wales^{[footnote 5]} back into public ownership. The deal enables steps to be taken to fix the long-term decline in the condition of forces’ housing, allowing the MOD to begin work on redevelopment and improvements to Service Family Accommodation.

For more information on SFA, please see the DIO website.

Data Sources and Quality

Data on housing is provided by regional contractors to DIO, who enter it into an electronic asset register (database). Each year, data as of 31 March is extracted from this system by DIO and collated to produce the tables.

The data in these tables has been extracted from an MOD database which is reliable and there are no significant concerns regarding its accuracy. In addition to validation by DIO, the data in these tables has been subjected to a check by Government Statisticians.

Further information can be found in the Background Quality Report.

Further Information

Rounding

In this publication, figures are given to the nearest hundred and percentages to one decimal place. Where rounding has been used, totals and sub-totals have been rounded separately and so may not equal the sums of their rounded parts.

Revisions

There are no revisions to this edition.

Corrections to the published statistics will be made if errors are found, or if figures change as a result of improvements to methodology or changes to definitions. When making corrections, we will follow the Ministry of Defence Statistics Revisions and Corrections Policy. All corrected figures will be identified by the shorthand [r], and an explanation will be given for the reason and size of the revision. Corrections which would have a significant impact on the utility of the statistics will be corrected as soon as possible, by reissuing the publication. Minor errors will also be corrected, but for convenience the publication of these corrections may be timed to coincide with the next annual release.

Contact Us

This publication has been produced by the Data Exploitation team in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.

We welcome feedback on our statistical products. If you have any comments or questions about this publication or about our statistics in general, you can contact us as follows:

Data Exploitation team (DIO)

Email: DIODEx-GeospatialAndAnalytics@mod.gov.uk

If you require information which is not available within this or other available publications, you may wish to submit a Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to the Ministry of Defence.

If you wish to correspond by mail, our postal address is:

Data Exploitation (Accredited Statistics)
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For general MOD enquiries, please call: 020 7218 9000

1. Major Housing Deal Completed: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-housing-deal-completed-bringing-benefits-to-forces-families ↩

2. Major Housing Deal Completed: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-housing-deal-completed-bringing-benefits-to-forces-families ↩

3. Modernised Accommodation Offer: Modernised Accommodation Offer (Previously New Accommodation Offer) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

4. ‘A Decent Homes: Definition and guidance for implementation. Communities and Local Government June 2006: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-decent-home-definition-and-guidance ↩

5. Major Housing Deal Completed: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-housing-deal-completed-bringing-benefits-to-forces-families ↩