Recommendation 22

The Department said that the volunteer estate was a critical enabler for it to deliver the ambitions for increasing the numbers of reserves and cadets set out in the SDR. However, the Department told us that the estate had been in a state of managed decline, and that it had too many sites, some of which are not in the right places.32 The Department has started an estate optimisation programme to dispose of unneeded sites and modernise others to better serve the needs of cadets and reserves. It explained that it aimed to provide the right facilities in the right locations, balancing the need for sites near urban centres with maintaining sites in more remote areas too. By December 2024, the first phase of the programme had brought in £6.8 million from the disposal of 64 sites, and it had plans to sell 46 more, with forecast receipts of £7.7 million. The Department has reinvested these receipts in the remaining estate, and by December 2024 the programme had completed or started renovation at 85 sites costing £38.1 million.33