Councils that house military sites could be forced to cover the huge cost of Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to return 70,000 troops and personnel from overseas bases, and to axe a further 42,000 jobs, The MJ has learnt.
MPs and councillors representing garrison towns are demanding extra funding for areas facing new pressures on local housing, education, children’s, welfare and care services following the coalition’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) last October.
Critics claim the MoD and DCLG have failed to consider the local impact of SDR targets to decommission more than 20,000 troops from UK bases in Germany and Cyprus – many of whom are currently in Afghanistan – and to axe 17,000 troops and 25,000 civilians.
Prime minister David Cameron has announced half of the decommissioned troops will return from Germany by 2015, with the remainder back home by 2020. While troops from decommissioned overseas bases are likely to return to garrisons in areas such as Aldershot and Lincolnshire, council experts believe a large proportion of newly redundant troops and personnel will migrate towards their former barracks, or southern England, in pursuit of work.
Alison Seabeck, an MP in the naval stronghold of Plymouth and Labour’s shadow housing minister, last week wrote to chancellor George Osborne and Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, warning ‘concern is growing that detailed consideration is not being given to the potential impact’ on councils already facing a 27% cut in Whitehall grants by 2015.
Plymouth will lose 2,000 naval personnel to Faslane in Scotland as part of the SDR. Ms Seabeck’s letter to Mr Osborne warns of an impending ‘headache’ for Argyll and Bute Council, which houses Faslane.
‘Your colleagues in DCLG appear to be putting their heads in the sand and hoping the problem will go away, or simply passing the buck down to local authorities,’ she writes.
Ms Seabeck’s letter to Mr Moore goes further. ‘This is a ticking time-bomb which does require work to be done now to ensure local authorities…are not caught on the hop and that funding capacity is in place to manage this migration,’ she explains. Rushmoor DC, with an Army presence in Aldershot, told The MJ it is already experiencing ‘significant’ housing and care pressures following the decision to allow former Gurkhas and their families to settle in the UK.
Cllr Mike Roberts, deputy leader of Rushmoor’s Labour group, said: ‘There’s a much bigger problem looming: the decommissioning of troops from Germany and Cyprus.
‘Now it won’t just be an issue for garrison towns like mine, it will be an issue for other parts of the country as well,’ he said.
Birmingham City Council this week became the first council to build family homes specifically for ex-servicemen. But the initiative involves just 12 new homes.
A MoD spokesman said the department would house decommissioned active troops and their families. ‘Generous MoD redundancy packages and re-training programmes’ would also ease council costs,’ he said.
‘But there comes a point when former MoD staff simply become…members of their local community, with all the economic pressures that brings’.
