Armed Forces: Housing

Lady Hermon
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many emergency maintenance requests were made for properties occupied by service personnel and their families in each of the last 12 months; and what the average length of time taken to carry out the maintenance was in each month.

Derek Twigg
The actual length of time taken to carry out the maintenance for individual requests is not recorded. Two areas within Northern Ireland routinely categorise all calls as urgent and have therefore not been included in this response. For the other three areas, the pro rata number of emergency requests made by service personnel and their families during the last 12 months was:

--------------------------------------------------
|              |Number of emergency requests made|
--------------------------------------------------
|November 2006 |22                               |
--------------------------------------------------
|December 2006 |13                               |
--------------------------------------------------
|January 2007  |19                               |
--------------------------------------------------
|February 2007 |16                               |
--------------------------------------------------
|March 2007    |21                               |
--------------------------------------------------
|April 2007    |8                                |
--------------------------------------------------
|May 2007      |4                                |
--------------------------------------------------
|June 2007     |2                                |
--------------------------------------------------
|July 2007     |4                                |
--------------------------------------------------
|August 2007   |1                                |
--------------------------------------------------
|September 2007|2                                |
--------------------------------------------------
|October 2007  |7                                |
--------------------------------------------------

Mr. Bellingham
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what account is taken of the standards of accommodation for serving military personnel in the Government’s overall policy for the armed forces; and if he will make a statement.

Derek Twigg
The Government recognise that decent accommodation is a fundamental part of the package we give to our armed forces personnel and their families. We are taking a targeted and long-term approach to investing in accommodation, taking account of defence priorities across the board and the need to ensure value from public money.