Bringing housing home

Julie is a woman with a mission. On a huge whiteboard that dominates the back wall of her office she has mapped all of the pressures currently impacting on Army families. Not surprisingly, housing and operations lie right at the centre. But the sprawling web of issues that need addressing does not faze Julie - it is exactly what motivates her.

Talking enthusiastically about her role, Julie said:

"I enjoy the fact that we really do make a difference. And I have been an Army wife for nearly 15 years so I am making a difference in something that I'm experiencing. I'm still living the life.

"I think everybody wants to make a difference but they don't necessarily know how to pull it all together. I feel we, for Army families, are doing that."

The AFF runs an ongoing engagement programme to help make Army families aware of the support services available to them:

"That's our big one," said Julie. "It's about empowering families to help themselves - so they know what they are entitled to, what they can do about certain situations, and how to really enjoy being an Army family."

The other big competitor for the AFF's attention is tackling key issues - housing is currently top of the list. Over 50 per cent of the enquiries received by the AFF each month are about accommodation. Speaking as a long-standing tenant of Army housing, Julie noted:

"It's part of the terms and conditions of service and because we move around so much, housing really is key."

It is by no means the only burden on Service families though:

"The pace of deployment is massive and really puts pressure on. And when you've got children there is the extra dimension of education and settling them down."

The National Audit Office published a report on the quality of Defence housing in March this year - a welcome step forward in Julie's view:

"We were really pleased with it. Especially the way it highlighted customer service as being a key element. It was a good reflection and I am waiting now to see how we will move forward with it and the actions that will come out of it."

The report addressed the role of the Housing Information Centres (HICs), an issue which is also close to Julie's heart:

"A good HIC is essential. It is absolutely central to making sure that families get good customer service. While I know that some people are working really hard to change things, one wrong word on that telephone can just blow it all out of the water for a family."

Julie talks about shifting the MOD's attitude towards housing. She said:

"I am in so many meetings where we talk about 'housing'. Actually, these are people's homes. This is where I am bringing up my three children."

On the issue of housing allocations she added:

"I do think that the [HIC] staff try hard but they are under pressure and as far as they're concerned they have a list of houses to give out and that's it. It's getting that human side of things right."

That said, recent changes to improve the service provided have not gone unnoticed by the AFF. Defence Estates (DE) has recently piloted a prepayment cleaning scheme that will soon be rolled out nationwide.

Julie joked:

"We all leave a clean house and move into a dirty one and I don't know why that happens!

"For me, as a working mother, moving house every two years, the joy of being able to write somebody else a cheque and give them that pressure of cleaning my house is just fantastic. I think that's a great move forward."

Another initiative has been to guarantee that houses are passed back from MHS* to DE 48 hours before a family is due to move into them to ensure decent standards for habitation:

"We are hearing positive things about the early takeover but there are still some blips. We rely on the housing officers being robust with MHS. They need to be able to say 'this isn't clean enough', and in some areas it's not happening."

Communication and local knowledge are areas Julie still feels the HICs can improve on:

"It's about how you communicate with a family. It's explaining you might only have one house to allocate - and it might be the worst house on the street - but if you explain properly to a family why, they will take it. If you just say 'it's yours, you are having it', people are going to say 'hang on a minute, I don't want that one'.

"Then there's local knowledge. It's called an information centre so it should be able to give information. If a family phones up and says 'where are the three bedroom houses in Tidworth?', the HIC at the moment will not be able to tell them."

A substantial number of enquiries received by the AFF each month relate to housing maintenance and repairs. But Julie has witnessed some improvements in the service provided by MHS in the last 12 months:

"Through their cultural change programme, their staff are starting to understand a little bit more about the customer base that they are serving.

"Lots of families do have a good experience with them [MHS] but some don't. There are particular areas that are bad - London is one. But they do address it and they do listen to what we say which is good."

Earlier this year, in a bid to reduce repair waiting time, MHS rolled out personal digital assistants (PDAs) to all their operatives to allow them to automatically receive work instructions and return job updates:

"While I have some reservations in principle, they are a good move. With missed appointments and things, they [MHS] can tell where their operatives were supposed to be and where they actually were."

Another welcome change for Julie was the introduction of Military Liaison Officers who came into post last summer. Their arrival has markedly reduced the number of housing allocation enquiries received by the AFF:

"They have had a big impact. Just having a military person on the end of the phone, who can in military speak explain a situation, Service personnel and their families appreciate that."

Despite being frustrated by the pace of the Housing Upgrade Programme**, Julie has been impressed by the properties she has viewed:

"The finished product is very good and that's what we have to focus on. We had some very good feedback, especially from those moving into Dale Barracks and Blandford Garrison, but there are still, in Blandford particularly, a lot of quarters that aren't in very good condition."

On the impact these upgrades are having on Army personnel, Julie said:

"It's brilliant for morale. If you move into a nice, clean, modern home, provided by your employer, to me that says you are a valued member of staff. With the guys doing so many deployments at the moment, to know their families are safe in a good, clean house, is one less worry for them.

"Statistics from Operation TELIC 13 show that if a soldier on deployment is worried about what's going on at home, then he is three times more likely to suffer from mental health problems. And housing is part of that. It's important operationally."

Julie is totally dedicated to the AFF's cause but she is also realistic about the role Army families must play in achieving the vision for a better quality of life for all Army families:

"One of the things that upsets me most is when you see pictures of fly tipping and littering and dog fouling and you think, is that our people that are doing that to our estate? What we need to show is that we care for our estate. We need to take some of that responsibility as well."

The AFF and DE enjoy a good working relationship at a strategic level. Julie observed:

"I think we have a really open relationship. I'm happy that I can phone anybody and raise concerns and have offline chats or online chats or whatever we need. Whether that same communication is seen by families, I don't know.

"The key thing is open, honest, communication. People don't like giving bad news and will try and mask it a bit. Having lived in Service family accommodation for so long myself, I think that families feel that if something is not going to happen, just tell me outright."

The budding relationship between the AFF and DE is mutually beneficial and both organisations have a part to play in getting housing removed from Julie's whiteboard. She concluded:

"Everyone's got a bad news story about housing or repairs and very few people have a good news story. When you question them about it, that bad news story may be a couple of years old but it's the one that keeps coming up.

"It's our role to point out to DE that these are the bad news stories - this is what you need to overcome."

* MODern Housing Solutions (MHS) is DE's prime housing contractor, providing repair and maintenance services for Service family housing in England and Wales.

** In 2008/09 DE upgraded 726 family quarters to the top standard for condition, including new kitchens, bathrooms and boilers, rewiring and reroofing. In 2009/10 DE plans to upgrade a further 800 homes.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2009 edition of Estatement - delivering estate solutions to Defence needs.