Six refurbished homes at Pirbright are being used to test technologies intended to make service family accommodation warmer and cheaper to run, in a trial the Ministry of Defence describes as the first of its kind for military housing, according to the department.
Each of the six carries a different combination of equipment, including solar panels, battery storage, electric heated skirting boards, hot water systems and zero-emission boilers, so the department can work out which combinations deliver the most benefit. All six have also been given modern kitchens, bathrooms, fencing and doors.
Feedback from the families living in them will shape investment decisions across the estate. The trial follows a research and development day held earlier this year at which businesses showed technology that might be used in military housing.
Sebastian O’Hara, operations director for accommodation at the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, said: “Service families deserve homes that are warm, safe and fit for modern living.
“This pilot is the first of its kind for military housing giving us the opportunity to test new technologies in real homes and understand directly from families what makes the biggest difference to their day-to-day lives. The feedback we get from our families will be used to inform investment decisions, shape the future of military housing and ensure we focus on solutions delivering better outcomes for families.
“This is about learning what works, listening to our customers and building a better housing service for the future. Through the new Defence Housing Service, we’re driving change across military housing, delivering better homes, raising service standards and putting the needs of Service personnel and their families at the heart of everything we do.”
The work forms part of the Defence Housing Strategy, backed by £9.2 billion and intended to see 40,000 military homes modernised, refurbished or rebuilt over the next decade, delivered through the new Defence Housing Service.
Separately, 3D scanning is being used to create digital versions of military homes, with around 2,000 properties due to be scanned and digitised over a two-year trial. The intention is to plan repairs and upgrades more efficiently, keep better records across a property’s lifetime and carry out some inspections remotely.
A pilot will give families a greater role in signing off repairs and maintenance before jobs are closed, and a code of conduct will set expectations for how staff and contractors treat families.
None of these are new technologies outside of the top brass in the Army and taking so long to digitally scan 2000 homes is taking the piss, it works out at roughly 4 per day. With modern digital scanning techniques you could easily do more than that per day as it takes about 4 minutes per room including setup.
Great, long overdue. I recall the last bit of modern technology to be installed in a quarter I resided in…BT phonepoints of the plug-in style rather than hard-wired. Probably in the 80s?
The bigger question is why the £800m upgrade programme has been deferred; deferment announced just a few weeks ago.
Warmer and cheaper to run, knowing the MOD that’s x 2 sets of jumpers for the adults and 2 x water bottles for the kids. When I first got my quarter, some of you may remember the Ramillies flats in North Camp……sheeeesh
Didn’t I read the other day the govt have cut £800m from the military housing budget? Or was it just rumour!
If anyone has the addresses or postcode/number of these, you should be able to look at the new Energy Performance Certificates to get more detail on the EPC Register.
The pilot is a sensible move to work out what us suitable for their particular stock and their people.