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The Minister was introduced to team members from Operations, Modernisation, Transformation and Communications and saw first-hand the enthusiasm and dedication from those he met and who are working to deliver every day for Veterans and their families. 

Leo Docherty, Min DPV, said:

“I would like to thank Veterans UK for their enduring hard work supporting our veterans and their families. The outputs of their transformation programme will greatly enhance the experience of those making a claim.”

Spending a few minutes chatting with Minister, one of the Operational Leads said:

“We wanted to get across to him how much we value our customers and how the staff here are passionate about delivering for them despite the complexities of the work we do. He was genuinely interested and because he had served in the Armed Forces we could use him as an example, so it really brought it to life for him.”

She added:

“We discussed the fact that we try really hard to get things right first time but the teams are battling with out of date technology and are often reliant on external organisations for information which can cause delay.  As a consequence we don’t always get it right.  Where we don’t get it right we always work really hard with our Veterans and their families to put things right and continually learn.”

Next, team members from the Modernisation and Transformation areas explained how Defence Business Services (DBS) are moving from predominantly paper-based systems and the plans for future aspiration to bring all the different systems together to create a much better experience for the end user.  A member of the Veterans Modernisation Project said after the visit:

“The Minister was very interested in seeing how our new online claim service is going to work and was particularly interested in, once we go live with it, how fast it will be for our customers; benefiting our overseas Veterans in particular.”

Brigadier Caroline Hull, Head of Armed Forces and Veterans Services for DBSVeterans UK, who welcomed and hosted the Minister at Norcross, said:

“The Minister was genuinely interested and took away with him the strength of feeling Veterans UK staff have for delivering quality services for our Veterans and their families. As the new Head of Armed Forces and Veterans Services I see how hard the team are working and I’m glad that we got a chance for the Minister to see this and the transformation initiatives we are driving to improve things further.”

Leo Docherty attends the Armed Forces Covenant Conference

Earlier in the day, Min DPV also took the opportunity to see first-hand some other Veterans’ related initiatives in the North West as well as attend the annual Armed Forces Covenant Conference in the morning. Delivering his key note speech to the conference delegates at the Kings House Conference Centre in Manchester, the Minister also met with the Greater Manchester Police’s Veterans Network to hear what they are doing to recruit Veterans into the Police Force. Before travelling to Norcross on his final visit of the day, the Minister also met with the team who are involved in the ‘Veterans into Logistics’ in Trafford. The Minister was introduced to Veterans who had taken advantage of the initiative to recruit into the haulage business and hear about the success they were achieving in their new careers.

Leo Docherty visits the charity Veterans into Logistics

As well as modernising our services and looking forward to providing more digitally enabled ways for individuals and their representatives to make a claim, monitor its progress, and stay in touch with us, as demonstrated to the Minister on his visit, we are also committed to continuously improving our services.

Our end users told us that they want and need more information about how the compensation scheme claim and appeals processes work, so our first step has been to produce a comprehensive suite of diagrams that illustrate the flow of a claim or an appeal, and what happens as the application is considered and processed.

We will keep you informed of all these improvements as they develop, via this and other channels. You can also follow us on Facebook@modveteransuk and Twitter VeteransUK_MOD.