MoD spends £325m sprucing up its offices: Huge sum spent while soldiers live …

MoD has forked out £285million running its state-of-the-art main office
Costs come amid a £5billion freeze on military housing improvements

By
Ian Drury

PUBLISHED:

00:57 GMT, 29 July 2013

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UPDATED:

00:57 GMT, 29 July 2013

More than £325million has been spent running plush Ministry of Defence offices while soldiers and their families live in dilapidated homes.

Defence chiefs are forking out huge amounts of taxpayers’ money on lavish offices with marble and stone floors, a fully-equipped gym, restaurant and coffee bars so civil servants work in comfort.

Yet troops must endure ageing barracks with leaking roofs, broken boilers, faulty wiring, cracked windows and damp.

Expensive: Refurbishment at the Ministry of Defence in London

The sums spent on making life easy for cosseted desk-bound penpushers will fuel disgruntlement within the hard-pressed Armed Forces.

They are revealed at a time of plunging morale among troops – many whom risked their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan – as they struggle to deal with 30,000 redundancies, pay freezes and the axing of perks.

The MoD has forked out £285million running its state-of-the-art air-conditioned main office in Whitehall, a prime location next to the River Thames, in just three years.

The imposing building houses more than 30,000 civil servants who enjoys subsidised restaurants, cafes and ‘relaxation rooms’ where staff can take a break.

Grand: The Ministry of Defence office in Whitehall

The offices also contain plasma screens, 3,500 oak doors costing £3million and civil servants sit on chairs worth £1,000 each.

Ministers paid £746million for the private finance deal, where the Government repays the cost of refurbishment and maintenance over 30 years.

But when inflation is taken into account, actual payments over 30 years will be £ 2.35billion.

The MoD has also spent £32million running St Georges Court, a small office complex in New Oxford Street, central London, and £6.5million on operating Cromwell House, a Grade 1-listed building in Whitehall Gardens.

The figures were uncovered by Parliamentary questions from Labour MP John Mann.

The amount of money spent contrasts sharply with the dilapidated military accommodation that troops and their families are forced to endure in Britain and Germany.

In 2011, the MoD received more than 400,000 complaints about substandard homes.

Most gripes were about damp, mould, leaking roofs and problems with boilers and electricity supplies.

Uncovered: John Mann MP discovered the extravagant new expenditure

A survey this year by the RAF Families Federation highlighted how service personnel were still living in crumbling homes.

One wife, who declined to be named, told the organisation: ‘I have just moved into the worst accommodation I have ever occupied during my marriage.

‘Mould, archaic plumbing, broken windows and a concrete garden are all features of my new home. It is situated on a very dilapidated estate. Empty houses surround me, with broken fences, windows and scaffolding propping up condemned housing. It has brought me to tears.’

A report by the Commons’ Defence Select Committee recently found two-thirds of service accommodation for members of the armed forces without families was rated ‘unsatisfactory’.

Despite this, the Coalition has halted a £5billion upgrade programme for military housing in a bid to save money.

In the Armed Forces own annual survey, published this week, one in three troops said the shabby state of service accommodation increased their desire to quit.

And 30 per cent said they were ‘dissatisfied’ with the standard of military accommodation with 40 per cent claiming they were unhappy at how long it took to get workmen to carry out repairs.

The comments below have not been moderated.

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This isn’t news – the refurb took 3 years and was finished in 2004 – nearly ten years ago!

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Trubrit
,

Charlton,
29/7/2013 16:09

This kind of extravagance is rife throughout the public services austerity is not for them.

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Derrick Bennett
,

Peterborough, United Kingdom,
29/7/2013 15:45

Who cares if there are only 3 soldiers a rowing-boat defending the UK so long as the MOD crowd are nice comfortable?

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Campbell
,

Oxford UK.,
29/7/2013 15:44

Austerity?
Apparently not.

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BarrieJ
,

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom,
29/7/2013 15:22

The follow on from Gordon Brown hiding Government debt in PFIs, 30 year contracts are nice if you can get them, why didn’t they do a PFI on the serving staffs accommodation as well ?

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ainsley
,

London uk,
29/7/2013 15:22

So what’s new? The rank and file always come off worst’

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Andy B
,

Derby,
29/7/2013 15:10

I would bet it was ” organized” by some senior civil servant! Nothing will happen of course nothing ever does.

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Joe
,

Guelph,
29/7/2013 15:05

“Yet troops must endure ageing barracks with leaking roofs, broken boilers, faulty wiring, cracked windows and damp” – The MOD sticking two fingers up at ordinary service men and women has always been going on. Couple that with Porton Down, Gulf War Syndrome, Depleted Uranium etc. Yet soldiers are still joining the military to get killed fighting wars based on fake dossiers for the minimum wage. Only a naïve child would consider joining. That is why the MOD recruits children for this very reason.

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xp1234
,

London, United Kingdom,
29/7/2013 14:48

nothing changes, posh stuff for officers and ignore the troops, make you wonder if they have any concept of the fighting person on the front other then just a number.

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susan
,

bournemouth,
29/7/2013 14:29

As an ex soldiers I was “marched into a bad married pad and simply refused sign for it” as we were both at that time in the Army I had the finance to simply rent my own private accommodation , being in the south east of England not a cheap option but better than the hole they offered me, nothings changed , and this story just highlights the them and us attitude that will never change, respect for our Defence Minister and his cronies for get it, why don’t they come and spend just one night in one of the pads in Colchester that , as for the ex military who are now employed as Barrack officers and whos job it is to hand over these pits to the men and women presently serving , they need to take a hard look at themselves and ask, would you put your son or daughter into to this….say no more

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mountaindweller
,

cleveland,
29/7/2013 14:25

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MoD spends £325m sprucing up its offices: Huge sum spent while soldiers live …

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