Legislation – Renters’ Rights Act 2025

the work to maintain and improve the standard of service family accommodation in England that is undertaken during that year and planned for subsequent years.

(2)

The Secretary of State—

(a)

may make the required assessment, or

(b)

may arrange for an independent person to make the required assessment,

in relation to any year.

(3)

If the Secretary of State makes the required assessment in relation to a year, the Secretary of State must—

(a)

arrange for an independent person to evaluate the assessment, and

(b)

include that evaluation in the annual report relating to that year.

(4)

The Secretary of State must lay each annual report before Parliament.

(5)

The required assessment for a particular year may be made by reference to what is, in the view of the person carrying out the assessment, a representative sample of service family accommodation.

(6)

The duty imposed by subsection (1) may be complied with by the preparation and publication of a report which relates to service family accommodation in England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

(7)

For the purposes of this section, service family accommodation meets the relevant standards if the accommodation would be a decent home when assessed in accordance with the 2006 decent homes standard.

(8)

The Secretary of State may, by regulations, amend this section so as to make provision about what it means for service family accommodation to meet the relevant standards (which may include provision that operates by reference to other subordinate legislation).

(9)

But that power is not exercisable unless and until, in the Secretary of State’s view, it has ceased to be appropriate for the 2006 decent homes standard to be used for the purposes of the required assessment (having regard, in particular, to whether, or how, that standard continues to be used for other assessments of the standard of living accommodation).

(10)

In this section—

“2006 decent homes standard” means the document called “A Decent Home: Definition and guidance for implementation” that was published by the Department for Communities and Local Government on 7 June 2006;

“annual report” means a report prepared in accordance with subsection (1);

“independent” means appearing to the Secretary of State to be independent of—

(a)

the Secretary of State,

(b)

other Ministers of the Crown,

(c)

government departments, and

(d)

persons who provide, manage or maintain service family accommodation;

“required assessment” means an assessment of the extent to which service family accommodation meets the relevant standards during a year;

“service family accommodation” means any building or part of a building which is provided for the use of service families as living accommodation (whether or not it is provided by the Secretary of State); and for this purpose a “service family” is—

(a)

a person subject to service law and members of the person’s family, or

(b)

a civilian subject to service discipline and members of the civilian’s family;

and expressions used in this definition have the same meanings as they have in the Armed Forces Act 2006;

“year” means—

(a)

1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, and

(b)

each subsequent period of one year beginning with 1 April.