The principles of the Armed Forces Covenant are that ‘those who serve/have served in the Armed Forces and their families, should face no disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services’.
Yet, when it comes to locally administered benefits, many local authorities could be doing more to help by giving proper consideration to our veterans and their families.
Military compensation payments (known as War Pensions or Armed Forces Compensation Scheme) are made to veterans in recognition of the pain and disablement that their service injury or illness has caused them.
However, unlike civilian payments for workplace injuries, 80 per cent of British councils treat some or all of this as income, rather than compensation, when applying for local benefits. This means that some veterans and their families are missing out on thousands of pounds every year.
This is why the Royal British Legion (RBL), in collaboration with Help for Heroes, is running the ‘Credit Their Service’ campaign.
This campaign seeks to work with councils to exempt Armed Forces compensation from means tests for housing benefit, council tax support, discretionary housing payments, and disabled facilities grants.
We estimate that more than 10,000 local benefit awards a year involve a recipient who also receives military compensation.
For individual local authorities, there will be very few cases where this is happening, meaning the costs to the council in disregarding this income will be low, yet the impact on the veterans who will be able to retain their compensation could be life-changing.
We are calling on councils to use their discretionary powers to update their policies and make sure that they do not treat compensation as income for local support.
You can contact the RBL at [email protected], or Help for Heroes, to find out if your local authority is treating Armed Forces compensation as income or not.
Visit www.britishlegion.org.uk and www.helpforheroes.org.uk to find out more about the work of the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes.