Service accommodation
Whilst I completely agree that insufficient money has been spent over many, many years on services single and families accommodation (S&FA), anyone who served in the forces over the last 30 years or so also knows that often considerable variations existed in the standard of the S&FA considered acceptable within the three services.
In my experience, generally speaking, the RAF seemed willing to spend/invest more on improving/maintaining their S&FA than the other two services. The RAF has always wanted to have a 'follow the flag' policy for servicemen and servicewomen's families and at least made some effort to provide appropriate pro-rata accommodation. Sadly, this was not always achieved and some particular eyesores stand out. For instance, the appalling concrete prefabs at Carterton should have been demolished years ago, but still continue to be an utter blot on the landscape. I believe they were built in the mid-1960s and were only expected to last for 30 years. Having lived in one of the 'better' ones for a number of years and watched the continual deterioration of the others, I have every sympathy for the serviceman's wife who spoke so well on the Today programme this morning about the problems she has encountered. When the Tory party decided to sell off the defence estate to a Japanese bank, I don't think anyone really believed things would improve, unsurprisingly with few exceptions they have actually got worse.
Of course there were often considerable variations and some units, particularly the ones about to close, often had much better S&FA than another fairly adjacent unit; unfortunately projects and plans usually work in the long term, whilst policy decisions, often driven by internal MOD politics, seem to work in the short term. Budgets can only stretch so far and priorities must be established, but however bad some S&FA was at RAF units, IMHO it was generally of a considerably higher standard than that occupied by the other two services. The Navy were at least fairly honest about their approach to families accommodation - in an ideal world they would prefer not to have any. Consequently, they have had a long-established assisted house purchase scheme, which encourages their personnel to get into the housing market as soon as possible, whilst at the same time reducing the requirement for families accommodation and much of the attendant service family social support. What families accommodation the Navy had available was often poor and consequently served as an even greater incentive for individuals to purchase their own home.
Sadly, IMHO many of the problems with the current standard of much the S&FA occupied by the Army are almost entirely their own fault. Whilst I accept that many old barracks were in a poor state of repair and need to be demolished and replaced, this was not always the case. Over a number of years, many RAF units, where considerable sums of money had previously been invested over a number of years to improve the standard of the S&FA, were handed over to the Army. Sadly, the policy of continuing to invest in improving/maintaining this estate often appears to have been curtailed and the result has been a gradual deterioration in their overall quality - particularly in the single accommodation for the junior ranks.
Having worked alongside the Army and seen how some of the troops behave, I can fully understand why so much Army single accommodation is so bad - put simply, they seem all too keen to trash the place at every opportunity. Many service personnel who have served down in the Falklands and lived in the 'Death Star' will have seen the different service attitudes at first hand, particularly if they take a walk down the far end to the Army accommodation.
Previous governments going back many, many years have continually failed to ensure that the Defence budget included sufficient money 'ring-fenced' to improve the standard of all S&FA throughout the services. But the Army should also be honest enough to admit that their own attitude to improving/maintaining S&FA, particularly for the single junior ranks, has often left something to be desired, often the result of the way it has been treated by the occupants themselves.
Proletarian