MoD given ultimatum to drop legal action against firm run by billionaire
The landlord run by the billionaire Guy Hands’ private equity firm has issued the government a two-week ultimatum to drop legal action to take over 38,000 homes for military families and instead accept a one-off refurbishment payment of £105m.
The Ministry of Defence revealed last week it planned to bring the properties back under government control, 25 years after a privatisation deal that has been criticised by the National Audit Office, the government’s spending watchdog, as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The landlord Annington’s offer would represent less than £2,800 per property, a figure that is thought to be unlikely to cover the costs of extensive repairs in some of the more dilapidated homes – and is lower than the MoD’s £140m spending on maintenance for a single year. It would also represent just over an eighth of what Annington paid out in a dividend to its parent company last year.
Lady Liddell, the Labour peer who chairs Annington, blamed the government’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation for failing to maintain the homes. She said her company, which owns 200-year leases on the properties, was “generously offering to put this right”.
In a letter sent on Tuesday evening to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and the defence procurement minister Jeremy Quin, Annington described the government’s attitude as “decidedly anti-business” and demanded the government accepted the deal and withdraw its legal action, or face a protracted court fight.
“It would be a shame to see money that could go to improving the houses being wasted on costly and lengthy legal action,” Liddell wrote.
In 1996, the Conservative government sold 57,400 properties in the so-called “married quarters estate” to Annington Homes, which was then
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