Defence Housing Strategy – an opportunity to build

The Ministry of Defence has initiated a significant, decade-long investment into its housing estate, committing £9 billion to modernise and expand accommodation for service personnel. The “Defence Housing Strategy 2025” details a comprehensive overhaul that presents substantial, long-term opportunities for the UK construction sector, including main contractors, specialist subcontractors, and materials suppliers. This programme signals a fundamental shift from a reactive “fix on fail” maintenance approach to a planned, professional lifecycle model, thereby creating a more stable and predictable pipeline of work for industry partners.

Central to the strategy is the generational renewal of the UK’s 50,000 service family homes, with a target to modernise or upgrade nine in ten properties. A key objective is for new-build properties to constitute at least one-third of the entire housing estate by the end of the ten-year programme. The scope of work is extensive, with plans for the refurbishment of approximately 43,000 homes. This creates a direct demand for services including the installation of modern kitchens and bathrooms, the replacement of windows, doors, and boilers, as well as comprehensive house rewiring and roofing works.

A major component of the upgrade programme focuses on energy efficiency. All renewed properties will be required to meet a minimum Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C, while new builds will target EPC B or higher. This requirement opens significant avenues for specialists in insulation, heat pump technologies, and other green retrofitting solutions. Furthermore, the strategy commits to the construction of over 9,000 additional homes to accommodate a growing Armed Forces, presenting prime opportunities for housebuilders and developers to engage in large-scale residential projects.

To deliver this ambitious programme, a new standalone public body, the Defence Housing Service, will be established to act as a professional landlord and developer. This entity will possess commercial discretion to raise private finance and enter into joint ventures and partnerships, explicitly encouraging engagement with small and regional housebuilders. A dedicated delivery function, tentatively named ‘Defence Developments’, will also be formed to manage the development of surplus MoD land, which has been assessed as having the potential to deliver over 100,000 new homes for both military and civilian use. The government intends to support these large-scale regeneration projects with specific planning flexibilities to de-risk investment and accelerate delivery, creating a highly attractive environment for private sector construction and infrastructure partners.

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