A long-serving British army warrant officer who “served her country with absolute distinction” is facing homelessness after she was blindsided when the Ministry of Defence tried to evict her from her service home.
Sergeant Major Natasha Campbell, a London-based engagement operations warrant officer who recruits school and university students to join the army, is stuck in a court battle with the government over a place to live after she was ordered to leave her accommodation without an alternative home being provided.
The fight was triggered when Ms Campbell moved from active service to working full-time as a reservist, meaning her days of compulsory detachment were reduced, thereby removing her entitlement to service accommodation.
Ms Campbell, who has been in the British army for more than 25 years and currently lives with her 21-year-old son, who hopes to join the Marines, was forced to apply for surplus family accommodation in July.
However the MoD’s housing arm, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), tried to evict them in September last year from the home in Northwood, despite no surplus property yet being provided.
The Watford county court heard this week the DIO obtained a possession order from a judge in September last year without Ms Campbell being informed of the court date, or receiving a notice to leave the property.
Ruth Camp, a duty solicitor representing Ms Campbell, told the court in a hearing on Tuesday that “she wasn’t aware of the [September] hearing, she hadn’t received any notice, and she was on work secondment at Woolwich barracks. She was doing her service for king and country.”
Ms Camp later said that Ms Campbell was “more at risk of homelessness than many other tenants” and, while she has approached the local council for emergency housing help, the local authority was struggling to deal with the situation as Ms Campbell has not left the army.
“As such she remains at risk of homelessness and there is insufficient attention paid to the covenant that we hold to her as a member of our armed forces who should be housed,” Ms Camp said.
At Tuesday’s hearing, a lawyer for the DIO told the court that they have been unable to find the notice to vacate that they said had been produced in order to get the original possession order.
They said that it was the duty of the court and not the DIO to serve Ms Campbell with the relevant documents. By the time of the March hearing, Ms Campbell had still not received any notice to vacate the property, despite the MoD having a possession order to evict her from her home.
The lawyer, on behalf of the DIO, told the court that “once the defendant left full-time commitment she was no longer an entitled category in accommodation”. He said that while “we accept she became eligible for surplus. We say there was an entitlement to serve a notice to vacate when she left full-time commitment.”
The court heard that in a previous hearing, lawyers acting on behalf of the DIO had wrongly suggested that Ms Campbell had been dishonourably discharged from the army. The DIO lawyer told the court on Tuesday that he wanted to “correct the record” on behalf of the MoD and make it “extremely clear that the defendant wasn’t dishonourably discharged”.
The lawyer described Ms Campbell as an officer of the “utmost standing”, who had “served her country with absolute distinction”.
The court heard that Ms Campbell had received a long service and good conduct medal.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Ms Camp, acting for Ms Campbell, successfully argued that the original possession order and subsequent orders should be set aside. She argued that it was not clear what policies the DIO had applied in order to pursue the eviction, or whether the original possession order had been made properly.
Judge Sharma ruled that the previous decisions could be set aside ahead of a new spring hearing that would in effect “take the matter back to the beginning”.
She said that it was accepted by the DIO that they created confusion by making the claim that Ms Campbell had been discharged on disciplinary grounds and as a result the judge had “concern that this possession order may have been made on the wrong grounds”.
Data obtained by The Independent through freedom of information laws shows that, as of 1 January 2025, there were around 897 surplus service family accommodation properties available across the UK.
There were 28 applications for a surplus home from all types of reserve personnel, full, home and local commitment, as of 17 January 2025.
