Honoring the Armed Services Community

Abstract: At the LGiU we champion local democracy because we believe it is the best way to achieve strong communities with good public services that meet local needs. For local councils and other local public services organisations, this means understanding who lives in the community and what their views and needs are. In every local authority area in the country there are members of a distinct community with particular needs: the Armed Forces community. This project, in partnership with the Royal British Legion, aims to raise awareness of the needs of the Armed Forces community and to identify current good practice by councils. We are very grateful to the 40 local authorities and public service providers who shared ideas and information with us. As expected, we found very significant goodwill towards the Armed Forces community within local authorities. Many thought there was a need to tailor their services to meet this community’s needs. There was welcome recognition that this community included spouses, dependants, veterans and reservists in addition to those currently in full time service. Many authorities expressed a desire for greater clarification of what services they should provide and how, showing a welcome commitment to continual improvement. This report shows how a good local authority might provide better services to the Armed Forces community. It presents a variety of policy options. Councils could choose to implement a voluntary duty to consider the needs of veterans in designing services. They might recognise the disadvantage suffered by veterans in accessing services such as housing and award them greater priority to compensate. Local businesses could be recruited to provide discounts for members of the Armed LGiU. Each of these policies would aid the Armed Forces community.