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Armed Forces Personnel

Retention often involves those in middle management such as sergeant-majors and staff sergeants, who are invariably married with children. As one who represents a not insignificant military community, I can tell the Minister that housing is crucial. I know that he is about to talk about this subject. Wives and children put great pressure on such middle-management personnel if their housing is not up to scratch. A constituent who came to see me the other day, a staff sergeant, had waited six months for important structural repairs to be carried out in his children’s bedroom. If that had happened to another constituent with a registered social or local authority landlord, we would be jumping up and down. It is not fair or acceptable for armed forces personnel to be in such a position.