COVENANT SUCCESS IN SUFFOLK: Armed
To keep the Armed Forces Covenant (AFC) out there in people’s minds, here’s Jim Brown from Suffolk County Council sharing how this Local Authority has brought the Community Covenant to life – and continues to do so.
S
uffolk is located on the East Coast of England and is home to the RAF Regiment at Honington, not far from the
Suffolk/Norfolk border. Whilst we have the Army’s Apache Helicopter Force and an Army Royal Engineer regiment in the county, we also currently have two major United States Air Force bases too. I come from a forces family (Army), joined myself (Army) for seven years and left to go to college/university – a mature student at 24 yrs of age! I’ve had little contact with the military for nearly 20 years, but that changed two years ago.
The signing of the Suffolk Armed Forces Community Covenant on 12 October 2012 was a big event which mainly included Council and Civic Leaders, Senior Military officers and local Royal British Legion and SSAFA representatives. I wasn’t involved at that time but today quite regularly 80% of my
working week as a council officer involves the military community. As Community Covenant Lead Officer I coordinate and stimulate activity and connect up opportunities and partnerships between organisations – really a similar role to what I do for civilian communities and charities. I do the funding advice bit too and as a result we have been fairly successful in pulling in project funding from the Armed Forces Community Covenant Fund and others.
The Community Covenant came at a time when lots of local authorities (councils) across the UK were just starting to reorganise themselves following government cuts. Redundancies and budget cuts applied to us too; therefore it was important to be pragmatic about the Community Covenant whose aim is to find opportunities to bring the military civil communities together for joint benefit. Some people thought that the council would want to fund anything they wanted and prioritise military families or
veterans over civil community equivalents. In summary it’s about fairness and understanding
and better recognising that the military community is part of our community.
The serving military community can be considered a closed community, this has improved, but there is a need to improve awareness and understanding of the issues and challenges that service personnel, service families and service leavers face. If you feel part of local society, there are many more options and services available to you and your family.
The first part of my role is similar to that of secretariat. Our main partnership board meet three times a year and we also have a Task Force group which also meets three times a
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Envoy Spring 2015
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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