Providing and looking after thousands of service family homes the length and breadth of the country is the responsibility of four different organisations.

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is responsible for the provision of Service Family Accommodation (SFA) and managing its maintenance through contractors.

The new accommodation contracts for SFA went live on 1 April, 2022 and are made up of five contracts – one National Accommodation Management Services (NAMS) contract awarded to Pinnacle Group, which runs the National Service Centre (NSC), and four Regional Accommodation Maintenance Services (RAMS) contracts.

Two RAMS contracts are managed by Amey Defence Services for the northern and central regions of the UK, covering around 39 per cent of SFA, and VIVO Defence Services manages the south-west and south-east regions, covering about 61 per cent of SFA.

NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The NAMS contract with Pinnacle Group provides a single NSC that families use to access housing services. This includes:

  • The repairs helpdesk that families use to report response maintenance requests. It triages jobs in line with urgency levels before allocating them to appointment slots with RAMs contractors.
  • Home services, which handles applications for SFA and other housing-related requests like permission to keep pets or to run a business from home.
  • Managing and responding to all complaints and the processing of compensation requests.

It is responsible for a network of local housing officers to supervise move-ins and move-outs and the management of individual patches. The contract also includes the Defence Accommodation Stores service, which provides furniture and white goods to SFA, where the family requests it, and Single Living Accommodation (SLA), but this is sub-contracted to Pickfords.

HOME MAINTENANCE

VIVO and Amey are responsible for maintaining homes and the community spaces around them.

This includes preparing homes for service families to move into, organising and delivering pre-planned maintenance like statutory inspections such as landlord’s gas safety inspections, carrying out response repairs and doing grounds maintenance.

They deliver SFA improvement works – which are funded separately from the response maintenance service – and they provide and maintain data on the condition of assets, together with advice on future maintenance or investment.

WORKING TOGETHER

The DIO recognises that when the new accommodation contracts went live, families did not get the level of service they were promised or deserved. Since then the organisation and its suppliers have been working collaboratively to improve the service received by families.

Contact the NSC on 0800 831 8628 or pinnacleservicefamilies.co.uk

See Families First newsletter.

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