Recommendation 13

The Department acknowledged that expectations of service personnel are changing, and that what they needed at different points of their career varied.39 We are aware, for example, that there are concerns about poor or expensive wi-fi, and a lack of cooking facilities.40 We were interested to understand what the Department was doing about the complaints by some personnel about the food on offer and the lack of self-catering facilities. 28 Qq 31–32 29 Q 35 30 Q 38 31 C&AG’s Report, para 3.9 32 Q 22 33 Q 23 34 Qq 22–24 35 C&AG’s Report, para 4.6 36 Qq 53, 69; C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 37 Qq 53, 69–71, 101 38 C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 39 Qq 14–15 40 C&AG’s Report, para 13 Improving single living accommodation for service personnel 13 The Department told us that it recognises that the ability to self-cater was a common requirement but, in many cases, accommodation was not built with such facilities. It is working towards offering this choice and provided an example of the Army, which is investing £77 million over the next 10 years in this area. However, it said the Army will be unable to upgrade around 25% of buildings because of fire or other safety regulations.41