COVENANT
introduction in 2014. Yetmany people might not realise that the scheme is an Armed Forces Covenant initiative introduced, in part, to help with the demand for greater stability,including access to home ownership, and an improved ability to exercise choice in the way that members of Service communities wish to live their lives. Other recent achievements have included:
•Introduction of the Tenancy Deposit Loan Scheme to give an advance of salary to fund the cost of adeposit for those wishing to rent aproperty privately.
•Waiver of the 3-month residency requirement for claiming Jobs Seekers Allowance for Service families returning from overseas.
•Funding from a£20M budget to improve childcare facilities for Service families at 40 locations in the UK and Cyprus.
•3top mobile phone providers agreed to adopt flexible approach for families accompanying their Service person overseas.
•Covenant can support spouse/ partner’s in their career progression. There are specific initiatives under the Armed Forces Covenant to support spouses and partners in fulfilling their career ambitions.
•Most recently,on25th June it was announced that Armed Forces personnel posted overseas will be able to keep their motor insurance No Claims Bonus for up to three years
and not pay cancellation fees if they are posted overseas at short notice.
‘….every RAF Station now has its own Covenant Champion who will work to raise greater awareness about the Covenant and help ensure
that our people are treated fairly’
The missing link
With all that the Covenant has achieved and continues to bring, the importance of reaching out and communicating those successes to all parts of the RAF community was obvious. The missing link was at station level where there was no one individual managing the flow of information to and from the local
community.The answer was to introduce anetwork of Armed Forces Covenant Champions to provide an essential link at alocal level. This means that every RAF Station now has its own Covenant Champion who will work to raise greater awareness about the Covenant and help ensure that our people are treated fairly.
To prepare them for their new role, a series of roadshows were held around the country in April and May to provide nominated Champions with greater
knowledge about the Covenant and to outline their key responsibilities. The new Covenant Champions have a broad remit but essentially they will be required to plan and implement local information sharing activities to raise awareness about the Covenant and communicating the latest news about Covenant commitments and initiatives that are of particular interest to RAF personnel and their families. They will also provide apoint of contact to answer questions on the Covenant or,where necessary,escalate issues of disadvantage that cannot be resolved locally.
While the establishment of the Armed Forces Covenant Champions represents apositive step forward both in raising greater awareness and in providing a framework for capturing matters of disadvantage due to RAF service, it does not remove the responsibility from individuals to challenge any instances where it is felt that the Armed Forces Covenant is not working for them. Naturally,there must be some management of expectation here; there are finite resources and the Armed Forces Covenant cannot be all things to everybody –itisnot about individual benefit but more about being treated fairly in line with the general population. However,ifyou don’t ask…..!
To find out who your Armed Forces Champion is, ask at your HiVE, check your Station Intranet site, look out for the posters around the unit, or contact the RAF FF and they can put you in touch.
raf-ff.org.uk
Autumn 2016
33
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