Britain’s housing crisis is a crisis for veterans

The scarcity and cost of housing now underpin almost every serious attempt to improve people’s lives: work, health, family, and education.

And that includes veterans. Because there is a simple truth about rebuilding a life after service. It has to happen somewhere.

We rightly talk about young families, renters and first-time buyers as victims of the housing crisis. But those who served — praised by every party, promised support by every government — are still too often missing from the housing debate.

A veteran can be offered training, treatment, advice, respect, medals, gratitude and opportunity. All of these matter. Some are life-changing. But without a stable home, they are much harder to secure. 

Yet too many remain in hostels, temporary accommodation, and sofa-surfing. Some have a roof over their heads, but are miles from work, treatment, family or support.

The answer to this issue is planning reform. 

Planning is not usually discussed in the same breath as veteran welfare. It belongs, supposedly, to another world of local committees, consultations, and viability assessments. It is a grey world of paperwork and delay. And every delay has a cost.

At Royal British Veterans Enterprise (RBVE), we have experienced delays that come with planning first-hand as we work to build more homes for veterans and disabled people in our Centenary Village in Kent. The village is where we are building 100 brand new homes for veterans, many with individual disability adaptations which have been made possible by donations. What we’ve found however, is that the difficulty is not lack of will. The will to build homes is absolutely there.

The legislative environment has changed dramatically over the past five years. The Building Safety Act, new planning and environmental requirements, and net zero goals have brought new standards, new tests and new layers of technical complexity. Many of these changes are well-intentioned and necessary. But taken together, they have created a system that is difficult even for private developers. For charities with less resources, it can be overwhelming and derail momentum.

We have seen what this means in practice. RBVE has had to secure national approval from the Environment Agency for a deep drainage solution for a new social enterprise building. That took time. In our Centenary Village — which houses veterans in state-of-the-art homes — the challenge of maximising daylight while preventing overheating has become so complicated that expert engineers have had to be brought in simply to specify the windows.

These are not choices. They are the rules of modern development. But these rules cost money — and for a charity, that money comes from donations.

Donors want their money to go on bricks, not consultants. We respect that. It is why we found it extremely encouraging to see the Government, various companies, and philanthropists all working together to make RBVE’s Centenary Village a reality. 

We are not arguing for lower standards. Quite the opposite. We want safety as much as anyone. We are leading the way on accessibility. We are committed to quality. The homes we are building at the Centenary Village will be fully electric, with no gas at all. People often tell us our homes feel like a hotel. That is not accidental. A charity only provides a fresh start if the home itself feels new and fresh.

In our sector we know of ambitious projects in Hull, Plymouth and Liverpool which have stalled. It is understandable that this happens when planning legislation has become more complex and charities are dealing with cost inflation in parallel. But it’s deflating when the whole community is excited for new homes and facilities and projects can’t get over complex practical planning challenges or inevitable decision making delays.

To that end, we welcome the Government’s proposed planning reforms. The proposals include stronger support for social and affordable housing, and clearer expectations that new homes should meet the needs of older and disabled people. 

When it comes to veterans, specifically, the Government has also taken important steps in the right direction. It has removed local connection restrictions so veterans can access social housing more easily. 

And it has promised that “homes will be there for heroes”. But access to a waiting list is not the same as a home.

Accessible planning laws that support the development of high-quality homes and infrastructure for veterans and require input from local residents would enable organisations like ours to provide veterans with the support they need at scale. 

At RBVE, we have seen over many years the difference a home can make. Our work on reducing veterans’ homelessness found that 72 per cent of those who moved on to sustained independent living secured some paid work. Stable housing is not passive welfare.

People rebuild their lives when the right things are connected: home, work, treatment, routine and community. This is made clear with the community that has formed through our own project, a community where the health and wellbeing of our residents is able to thrive owing to the quality of the homes — the kind of homes veterans desperately need and deserve.

For veterans trying to rebuild after service, a home is the first brick in the wall. Our Centenary Village is just the start. We now need to ensure that planning laws, building regulations and the wider governance efforts are in place to unlock other exciting and philanthropic developments to support our nation’s heroes.