Recommendation 9

While the Department told us that it is tremendously important that personnel feel valued for what they are doing, we pointed out that some are living with problems with basic facilities including heating and hot water. The Department agreed that people should have access to these facilities and explained that it had tried to tackle problems using ‘stubs and sockets’ to make heating and hot water quickly available where there had been a failure in the system. In the Royal Air Force this method meant that this year, some 900 people, who would otherwise have been adversely affected by disruptions, had had the problem fixed within 24 hours of it arising.23 However, given the age of many of these systems, the Department said that fixing a problem can take weeks and unreliable heating is probably present in around 50% of Single Living Accommodation. We questioned the reliance on quick fixes and the Department told us it aims to balance this approach with major rebuild and refurbishments.24