Housing Priority for Service Personnel - Measures

Service Personnel priority for Government's Low Cost Home Ownership schemes

The Government is aware that there is considerable appetite amongst members of the Armed Forces to own their own home and has consequently introduced a number of measures to make it easier for service personnel to own their own home.

Members of the Armed Forces are being placed at the top of the priority list for the FirstBuy scheme, which will see Government and housebuilders together providing around £400m to help almost 10,500 first time buyers to purchase a new build home.

Members of the Armed Forces are also being placed at the top of the priority list for all other Government-funded home ownership schemes eg shared ownership.

Special agents (HomeBuy Agents) have been instructed to visit military bases to explain to service personnel how the FirstBuy scheme works, and discuss options with personnel interested in applying for home ownership schemes.

In addition, service personnel will retain this priority status for 12 months after leaving their Service and in the event of death in Service it can be transferred to a bereaved spouse/civil partner.

Access to Mortgages

Government appreciates the difficulty faced by some service personnel in obtaining mortgages and secondary credit because they served overseas or lived on army bases with non standard British Forces Post Office postcodes which are not listed on UK credit referencing agencies databases.

To address this, Government is working with the credit reference agencies and the Royal Mail on standardising British Forces Post Office addresses and to correctly attribute information to service and ex-service personnel, to ensure that they are not disadvantaged when applying for a mortgage.

The lender sector is looking at other ideas to help service personnel in applying for mortgages.

Priority for Social Housing

The Government is committed to end the unfair treatment of Service families in need of a social home and ensure they are given proper priority on housing waiting lists.

By law local authorities must give 'reasonable preference' (priority) for social housing to certain people, including people who are homeless, living in overcrowded accommodation, or who have a medical or welfare need to move. Those leaving the Armed Forces will have priority, for example, if they were discharged on medical grounds, or are homeless.

Local authorities may also give 'additional preference' (high priority) to people in the reasonable preference categories who have more urgent housing needs.

We are consulting on a change to the law so that councils in England would be required to give additional preference to former Service men and women who have urgent housing needs.

We are also consulting on new regulations to ensure that those who serve in the Armed Forces - who are often expected to move from base to base - are not disadvantaged where councils set residency requirements as part of their qualification criteria.

Finally we have issued new statutory social housing allocations guidance - for consultation - which encourages fairer treatment for all Service personnel applying to go on council waiting lists, through the use of local preferences and local lettings policies.

Homelessness and Resettlement Support for Ex-Service Personnel

The Department for Communities and Local Government has a long record of working closely and successfully with Ministry of Defense (MOD) on preventing homelessness amongst Service leavers and providing support to help ex-Service personnel make the transition to civilian life.

Rough sleeping among ex-Service personnel has dropped. Latest data suggests about 3 per cent (36 people) of London's rough sleepers have experience of the armed forces.

The Housing Minister, Grant Shapps chairs the Ministerial Working Group on Homelessness which brings together eight government departments to help tackle the complex causes of homelessness. Andrew Robathan MP represents the MOD.

The Ministerial Working Group's first report Vision to end rough sleeping: No Second Night Out nationwide, published in July 2011, includes a commitment to support housing needs and resettlement for ex-Service personnel including early service leavers and veterans experiencing homelessness.

Government is providing a new £20m Homelessness Transition Fund, to be administered by Homeless Link, to deliver 'No Second Night Out' and ensure the voluntary sector continues to play a central role in tackling rough sleeping.

The £80m Places of Change Programme, which ended in April 2011, delivered two projects aimed at homeless ex-service personnel - the Beacon Catterick and the Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation "beef kitchen project" in London - offering accommodation, training and work experience to enable ex-service personnel make a successful transition to civilian life.

Custom Build Housing

Government is exploring what specific actions might be needed to enable more ex-service personnel to bring forward custom-built housing projects.

Self builders have a track record of delivering affordable, greener and more innovatively-designed homes, and make a big contribution to the number of new homes built in this country. But barriers include:

insufficient land available
limited access to finance and mortgages
too much regulation, and a local authority culture of saying 'no'
lack of clear impartial information - difficult for ordinary folk to know where to begin.

Government is examining these barriers and working with the Community Self Build Agency to see what can be done to encourage more enabling organisations bring forward schemes that will make it easier for more ex-service personnel to build their own homes.

The Community Self Build Agency is helping ex-service personnel to build the country's first specialist housing designed by, and for, service personnel in Bedminster.

Public Sector Land

MOD's Defence Infrastructure Organisation is a major contributor to the Surplus Public Sector Land Programme.

The Plan for Growth published at Budget 2011, announced that Government will accelerate the release of public sector land for new homes, and as part of this major landholding Departments, including MOD have published their land release strategies, and these are available at http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/newsroom/2001979.

Subject to planning, these sites may have potential for homes that could benefit ex-Service personnel.

Planning

The draft National Planning Policy Framework, published for consultation on 25 July 2011, seeks to ensure that the national planning rules are sufficiently flexible to support applications from disabled ex-service personnel for homes that suit their needs.

The consultation provided an opportunity to comment on the draft planning policies and closed on 17 October 2011. The Department for Communities and Local Government is considering the comments received.

Adaptations and Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG)

Disabled Facilities Grant is a statutory means tested local authority grant to help towards the cost of adapting a person's home to enable them to continue to live there.

Since 2008 the Department for Communities and Local Government have set aside funding to help the most severely disabled ex-Service personnel in their Disabled Facilities Grant applications. For 2011/12 and 2012/13 up to £1.5m each year of Disabled Facilities Grant funds has been set aside to support this. This is the result of the commitment within the MOD Command Paper. Subsequently, Local Authorities are given the opportunity to make a claim for reimbursement for those applications that meet the criteria. These include:

War Pensions Scheme for disablement of 80 per cent or higher and a Constant Attendance Allowance
Capital lump sum through the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme
Guaranteed Income Payment (tariff level 1-6).

The eligible Disabled Facilities Grant work is wide ranging, providing for access to the basic facilities within a home, including ramps, door-widening, stair-lifts and walk-in showers.

The grant is subject to a maximum limit of £30,000 in England and a means test to ensure that funding goes to those most in need, although children under 19 are exempt.

Funding for Disabled Facilities Grant has been protected within the 2010 Spending Review and by the end of the Spending Review period the national allocation to Local Authorities for Disabled Facilities Grant will increase from £169m in 2010-11 to £185m in 2014-15.

From 2011/12, the ringfence will be removed from the Disabled Facilities Grant providing local authorities with greater freedom and flexibility in delivering adaptations.