Earlier this month, the Government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) highlighted poor accommodation as a main factor in people turning their backs on a life of service and understandably so as they announced an investment package to tackle it.
Defence Secretary, John Healey MP said: “For too long, many military families have lived in sub-standard homes, but this Government is taking decisive action to fix the dire state of military accommodation and ensure that our heroes and their loved ones live in the homes they deserve.
He is of course correct, the very minimum soldiers deserve is to be able to return back from a deployment or exercise to a living space free of damp, mould or infestation.
It goes without saying that after fighting for their nation, they shouldn’t be forced on their return to fight through rubbish just to make it to their front door.
But in Catterick Garrison they are. Most shockingly however was the local council’s response, the organisation responsible for collecting (or not) the mounds of rubbish.
Did they admit a failure in their systems, a lack of personnel or take responsibility in some other form? No they did not.
Instead, it was the fault of the soldiers for not putting their cans in the right bin or not spending 15 minutes painstakingly separating their rubbish. Pathetic.
They told me: “We have encountered issues where incorrect items have been placed in bins put out for collection and this has meant they have not been able to be taken away.
“We would encourage all residents to dispose of their waste correctly.”
I asked the council if this was the case, why does every base across the country not resemble a third world tip? Are the soldiers in Catterick especially inept? Does every other soldier on every other base get special waste management training in addition to their weapon handling and battlefield first aid?
Their response was a telling symbol of their tardiness in doing what they were supposed to: “I will look into this for you. We do asking for two working days to come back with a response.”
Soldiers deserve better than this and as the country prepares itself for the prospect of war, it is essential that the MOD and No.10 get a grip of local council bureaucrats whose inability to do their job is having serious implications on the ability of the country to defend itself.
That might seem hyperbolic but unless we provide service personnel with a decent standard of living accommodation, they will continue to leave in droves.
The Government also pledged to sort out the mess that is private contractor management of the defence estate but was immediately undermined by a busy body waste of space who told residents of RAF Benson that they had to clear their front gardens as a matter of safety.
They kindly allowed people to sit in their front gardens in sunny weather but warned them that they must remove all items of furniture once they had finished and threatened to cut down swings if left.
Just imagine this, you are responsible for lethal kit worth millions of pounds, you deploy to active war zones and risk your life and you return home to be told by some imbecile that a garden chair or a football goal left in your own garden is too dangerous. Again, it be funny if not so utterly ridiculous.
These contractors rake in millions of pounds of public money from the MOD, often without doing the things they promise to do. The MOD must start putting their personnel first and telling these idiotic do-gooders to get back in their box and let people live.
