Defence chiefs pay out over £115million to civil servants in bonuses

Defence chiefs have paid out more than £115million to civil servants in bonuses while thousands of troops are being forced to live in squalid and damp homes.

Figures obtained by the Mail on Sunday show that since 2022 over 76,000 civilian staff received extra cash in their pay packets as part of the Ministry of Defence's performance-related pay scheme.

Ministry of Defence documents, revealed in a Freedom of Information request, show that in the first five months of the current financial year over £31million has been paid out in bonuses, with over 2,800 staff receiving a bonus of £5,000 or more.

In the same period , over 20,000 military personnel made formal complaints about the quality of their accommodation. 

Many of those were living in homes with broken boilers, leaky roofs or were infested with black mould.

Some 3,770 complaints were made to Pinnacle, which runs the national complaint service centre, between April and November last year - an average of 471 a month. 

This is up from 2,684 complaints in the same period last year.

Furious personnel and their loved ones broke ranks to share pictures online of the shameful state of their homes, with a veteran British Army General branding the UK's woeful military housing stock 'truly appalling' and 'not fit for a dog'.