The MOD has been heavily criticised by a Commons committee for spending £41 million-a-year renting more than 14,000 empty homes.

Members of the public accounts committee described the proportion of vacant quarters for servicemen and their families as "disturbingly high, at 24 per cent of the estate".

In a report published on Thursday, the committee made a series of key recommendations including a call for the department to re-examine their definition of the maximum level of vacant houses needed to manage the estate efficiently. Members said there was a need for better forecasting of demand for housing from service personnel.

The MOD currently provides around 61,000 family quarters in Britain to house more than 84,000 personnel and their families.

The bulk of the estate, some 51,000 homes, is owned by Annington Homes Limited and leased back to the Department under the terms of a sale agreement drawn up in 1996. Responsibility for the management and maintenance of the properties remains with the department and costs nearly £183 million a year, net of accommodation charges received from tenants.

MPs voiced heavy criticism for the department, saying it had failed to tackle the problem.

"While there are signs that the department are on course to reduce the scale of the problem, their track record in hitting their targets on vacant housing is poor. We have asked for quarterly monitoring reports so that we can monitor their progress on reducing vacancy levels," the committee said.

The MOD told the committee that the reason for the high level of vacant quarters was the difficulty in defining long-term needs because of uncertainty over the implementation of the strategic defence review.

The committee recommended: "The department should now develop better ways of forecasting demand, for example by modelling the demand for quarters from service personnel, which has recently been falling at four per cent each year."