Reform UK has pledged to prioritise empty Ministry of Defence (MOD) homes for homeless British Army veterans
The statement came from Reform MP Danny Kruger on 24 August 2026. He noted that the MOD holds around 50,000 homes—one of the largest public-sector housing estates in the country—with roughly a tenth empty. “Rather than using spare housing for Afghans and asylum seekers we should be prioritising homeless British Army veterans,” Kruger wrote. “Reform UK will do this—and also give veterans priority for the 50,000 new social homes we will build.”
This aligns with official figures. Defence family housing consists of almost 50,000 Service Family Accommodation properties across the UK, making the MOD one of the nation’s largest landlords. Recent data shows thousands of these homes are vacant: official statistics recorded about 8,800 vacant properties (around 18%) as of March 2025, while a Freedom of Information request reported 9,359 voids in April 2026, including hundreds empty for more than five years. Reasons include maintenance needs, modernisation, mobility of service personnel, and some long-term structural issues.
Kruger’s comments form part of Reform UK’s broader housing announcements, led by deputy leader Richard Tice. The party plans to build 50,000 affordable social homes a year over a decade, funded without new taxes or borrowing through measures such as reinvesting Right to Buy proceeds and other existing resources. Allocation rules would shift to prioritise British-born workers under 35, married couples with children, veterans, those in work, victims of domestic violence, and care leavers. New social housing lettings would be restricted to British-born people, building on earlier pledges to give foreign nationals in social housing a short grace period to move to private rented accommodation or face loss of residency rights. Reform estimates this could free up hundreds of thousands of homes currently occupied by foreign nationals.
The proposal taps into long-running debates about military housing, veteran support, and asylum accommodation. Successive governments have used surplus MOD land or sites for various purposes, including temporary asylum housing in some cases, while veteran homelessness remains a recognised issue. Government data indicates that in recent years around 2,270 households in England containing former Armed Forces members were assessed as owed a homelessness prevention or relief duty. Support schemes such as Operation Fortitude exist, and the current Labour government has pursued a Defence Housing Strategy involving billions in investment to modernise thousands of military homes and develop surplus land for more than 100,000 new properties, with a “Forces First” approach for service personnel and veterans.
Critics have pushed back. Labour has described Reform’s overall social housing plans as “unserious and unworkable,” arguing they risk increasing homelessness and temporary accommodation costs while targeting long-term UK residents who contribute to the country. Housing charity Shelter maintains that the core problem is a shortage of genuinely affordable homes and that reordering waiting lists will not solve the crisis—Shelter estimates 90,000 new social homes a year are needed over the next decade rather than the 50,000 Reform proposes. Data also shows that illegal migrants, asylum seekers, and those on many temporary visas are generally ineligible for mainstream social housing under existing rules.
Supporters of Reform’s stance frame it as a matter of fairness: those who have served the country should not be left behind while empty public assets sit unused and housing pressure mounts from high migration and waiting lists (currently around 1.3 million households). The MOD estate’s scale and vacancy rates make it an obvious target for political attention, especially given past controversies over the quality of service family accommodation and the costly history of selling and later buying back large numbers of military homes.
Whether Reform’s specific proposal to repurpose empty MOD properties for veterans would be practical depends on factors such as the condition of the homes, their locations relative to employment and support networks, security considerations on active sites, and legal or operational constraints on changing their use. The party has not yet published detailed implementation plans beyond the high-level commitment.
The announcement adds to the intense political focus on housing, migration, and the treatment of veterans ahead of the next general election. As Britain grapples with record temporary accommodation numbers, rising empty homes in the wider private sector, and persistent challenges in military housing, the debate over who gets priority for limited stock is only likely to intensify.
