Army Accommodation: Salisbury Prepares For Influx From Germany

Roughly 4,500 British troops will move from Germany to Wiltshire this summer. Of that number, 1,500 are families who will be housed on three estates on Salisbury Plain.

The hope is that all families can be provided with Army owned accommodation, thus avoiding the need for the MOD to rent from the private sector.

With that in mind, over 900 new homes are being built in the area; the town of Ludgershall will house 242 soldiers and their families, Bulford will house 225 families and 450 will be based in Larkhill.

The project has a budget of £246 million and has been ongoing for over a year.

“When you serve in the Army, you put a great deal of demands on those who serve,” Major General Richard Wardlaw said.

“Our soldiers, we ask them to give everything to service.

"So part of the deal of course is that we make sure we look after them in every aspect of their life and that means part of the deal is we make sure they have the best quality of homes that we can provide.”

As well as housing, infrastructure is also being built to cope with the scale of the arrival  –new schools and GP surgeries are planned.

Baroness Jane Scott of Bybrook, leader of Wiltshire Council, told Forces News that they wanted 'everything to be there for when these families came back': “That they’re not going to worry about school places.

"They’re not going to worry about where they’re going to have the baby, where the nursery schools were and... the health facilities.

“We needed right before they came back to be able to say to them, ‘It’s all in place.’

"When you come back, everything will be there for you.”

All three sites are currently close to completion but concerns have been expressed about whether the infrastructure will be ready in time.

Baroness Scott said she recently held a meeting with local medical services and said she now feels more comfortable because 'everything is in place'.

She added that whilst there would initially be a temporary medical facility in Larkhill that will become permanent.