I manage a team of chartered surveyors, town planners, registered valuers and technical staff who use their unique customer knowledge and insight of the Defence estate to provide in-depth advice, benefitting the military on MOD sites in the UK and overseas. The expertise we provide ranges from rural and commercial surveying, safeguarding specific assets and operational capabilities, byelaw management, acquisitions and disposals through to managing accommodation programmes, commercialisation initiatives, and valuation programmes.
Looking at the whole iceberg
The nature of the work that the Estates team undertakes can be likened to an iceberg – the portion which is visible above water is only a small piece of a much larger whole. Examples of the more visible activities include land sales where the wider community can see sale boards and information, the letting of MOD land and farms so as to reduce management costs and provide a realistic military training environment and the letting of buildings in garrison areas to provide services such as hairdressers, tailoring and other shops and even pubs.
One hidden example of the team’s work is sourcing, securing and managing over 1000 rental properties in various overseas locations to meet overseas military accommodation needs. In the UK the lesser known areas of our work include dealing with military training and manoeuvres damage claims. We manage the leases for some historic areas such as the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust Historic Dockyard, which has the National Museum of the Royal Navy, HMS Warrior, and the Mary Rose Trust as sub tenants.
As you can see the DIO Estates team provides a wide range of advice and support to our military customers and colleagues across DIO and I’ve hardly scratched the surface here!
Join us
If this has whetted your appetite, we currently have vacancies for suitably qualified property professionals - including: Senior Development Surveyor, Senior Valuer, Senior Surveyor, Senior Estate Surveyor and more to come! You can also look at future opportunities on Civil Service Jobs.

7 comments
Comment by ANTHONY REEVES posted on
We will soon be moving into a property in Imber Road Warminster Wiltshire BA12 0BN and there are several tall trees growing on the narrow adjoining strip of waste land between our property and the military vehicle park in Warminster (we can provide a marked up plan if required).
These trees need urgent attention for the following reasons: -
• Large branches currently overhang our property (including a PVC-roofed car port) and could cause injury or damage if they fall
• Large branches also overhang the footpath leading up to Pepper Place and, again, these could cause injury if they fall
• The trees and branches are taking a lot of light from our property
The first stage in dealing with this issue is to establish who is responsible for these trees (we believe that it is DIO) – there is a gate in the chain-link fence which provides access to the strip of land and the gate is padlocked so clearly someone must own this land.
Please could you advise us who owns this land so that we can resolve this issue?
Your urgent attention would be very much appreciated as we assume that any tree work will need to be done before the bird’s nesting season starts.
Comment by DIO Communications Team posted on
Hi Anthony, thanks for your message. I can see your email address so will ask our forestry team to check if it's our land and let you know.
Comment by ANTHONY REEVES posted on
Thank you - please can you advise how soon they will be able to do this?
Comment by DIO Communications Team posted on
It might take a while, as we'll have to establish whether it's our land, then the foresty/estate team will have to have a look and see whether anything needs to be done, and if so, book the work in.
Comment by Chloe posted on
Hi, we are having an issue of noise nuisance caused by one of your MOD properties. It sounds like the boiler is not working properly as it is causing significant noise and vibration on the party wall. Please can you assist us in making sure that the relevant team is informed and actions can be taken? Many thanks, Chloe
Comment by DIO Communications Team posted on
Hi Chloe, we'd suggest speaking to the relevant neighbours and seeing if there's a problem with their boiler, and if so, whether they have reported it.
Comment by Chloe posted on
Hi, we have tried to contact the tenant but they're only there on rare occasion (apparently it's a house used for people working at the MOD who need accommodation) and the letter we've put through the door has been ignored. Is there an email address for the properties team?