Written evidence submitted by RAND Europe and Shared Intelligence.

Introduction

This written evidence draws on research conducted by RAND Europe and Shared Intelligence (Si) in a series of studies funded by Forces in Mind Trust.

RAND Europe is a not-for-profit policy research institute based in Cambridge, UK. With research teams in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, RAND Europe is the European arm of the RAND Corporation, the world’s largest policy research organisation. Our mission is help improve public policy and decision making through objective research and analysis. Our work on Defence and Security policy includes a growing portfolio of research on Defence people, such as evaluating policies and programmes aimed at supporting the Armed Forces Community.

Shared Intelligence is a small public policy research consultancy with UK-based clients in central, regional, and local government, as well as charities and non-profit organisations. They undertake strategy development, research, and evaluation with a focus on building practical recommendations through stakeholder engagement.

RAND Europe and Si have collaborated on several studies on the Armed Forces Covenant (here after ‘the Covenant’). Currently, we are conducting the Our Community, Our Covenant and beyond study, which aims to illuminate the local and regional-level practices and realities of how the Covenant and wider support is being delivered to reduce disadvantage for the Armed Forces Community.[1] Prior to this project, we have conducted research on the impact[2] and implementation of the Covenant by local authorities[3] and an evaluation of the ‘Sustaining Delivery of the Covenant’ and ‘Strengthening and Empowering Delivery of the Covenant’ programmes from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust.[4]

In this evidence submission, we focus on the following questions of the inquiry:

1)      In what areas is the Armed Forces Covenant working well?

2)      Where is the Armed Forces Covenant failing the Armed Forces Community?

3)      What are the main causes for these failings?

In addressing these questions, we draw on both our previously published research as well as emerging findings from our current project on local implementation of the Covenant. Readers should be mindful that these findings are preliminary and subject to further analysis and peer-review.

1.   In what areas is the Armed Forces Covenant working well?

The Covenant is a centrepiece of the UK Government’s work to support the UK Armed Forces Community and it plays a critical albeit varied role in this context. To provide an informed assessment of the Covenant’s successes and failings, we believe that a starting point must be clarifying what we mean by ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ in relation to the Covenant. We also differentiate between areas in which the Covenant is working well from an implementation perspective (i.e., where are we seeing evidence of good practice in Covenant implementation), and an outcomes perspective (i.e., where is there evidence that the Covenant is achieving the desired benefits for the Armed Forces Community).

1.1 Understanding when the Covenant is ‘working well’  

The Covenant states as its overarching objective that ‘those who serve in the Armed Forces, whether Regular or Reserve, those who have served in the past, and their families, should face no disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services. Special consideration is appropriate in some cases, especially for those who have given most such as the injured and the bereaved’.[5] Based on this wording, we understand the overarching expectations of ‘success’ for the Covenant to be a reduction or mitigation of potential disadvantages faced by the Armed Forces Community in comparison to the wider civilian population.

However, there are several challenges in assessing the extent to which the Covenant’s overarching objective is being achieved, and the extent to which this can be attributed to the Covenant itself.  This includes, among others, the following issues: 

• As the Covenant aims not to be a prescriptive tool for service providers and provide flexibility for the implementation of its principles (which are subject to interpretation), it is challenging to evaluate its impact based on a common and shared set of criteria (as is conventional in most programme or policy evaluations).[6] Though we have tried to provide a coherent framework for assessing Covenant outcomes (discussed below), this inherent nature of the Covenant precludes the adoption of traditional evaluation methods to provide empirical evidence on how ‘well’ or ‘effectively’ the Covenant is working. 
• As the Covenant affects and applies to a wide range of actors and services, there is significant variation in the scale and nature of activities aimed at delivering the Covenant, and stakeholders often do not differentiate between activities they are conducting which are directly tied to the Covenant and activities which relate more widely to support for the Armed Forces Community. This makes it difficult to assess what improvements in outcomes among the Armed Forces Community can be attributed to the Covenant versus the wider ecosystem of support that exists for the Armed Forces Community.
• The question of how well the Covenant is working is also complicated by the fact that, in the words of one of our research participants, it ‘means different things to different people’. It is evident that the Covenant plays different roles for cohorts such as local authorities, commercial service providers, employers and the charity sector. In some contexts, its main role is to provide an accountability mechanism, while in others the Covenant provides a convening focus and helps drive collaboration. Though in this evidence submission we focus chiefly on Covenant implementation at the local authority level, it is important to recognise these diverse perceptions that exist across the sector of what role the Covenant plays and therefore what it means for it to ‘work well’.
• Reflecting the previous points, there is a lack of robust and consistent data on the impact of the Covenant, the levels of disadvantage faced by the Armed Forces Community, how the risk of disadvantage is changing, and the underpinning drivers of such disadvantage. The challenges of measuring impact differ across policy areas (Table 1) but overall mirror the difficulties in defining some aspects of ‘disadvantage’, as these may be subjective and difficult to track empirically. As we discuss in Section 3, there are wider limitations and gaps in data on the UK Armed Forces Community alongside inconsistency in data collection and needs assessments among local authorities.  

Table 1 Issues in measuring impact of the Covenant across education, employment, housing and health

To provide a clearer framework of outcomes for assessing progress in the implementation of the Covenant, we have attempted to break down the overarching Covenant objective into a Theory of Change, identifying outcomes that are associated with Covenant delivery at the local government level specifically.[7] This helps to articulate how local authorities in particular are expected to support the Covenant’s objective of reducing or mitigating disadvantage, and therefore identifying what measures we can use to understand impact of the Covenant at the local level. We identified the following key immediate outcomes that we would expect local authorities to work towards in supporting the Covenant’s overarching objective:  

• Understanding of the prevalence and key drivers of disadvantage among the local Armed Forces Community.
• Consistent consideration for potential disadvantages and particular support needs of the Armed Forces Community by local authorities across different policy areas.
• Amendment of policies and procedures to effectively understand and reduce disadvantage among the Armed Forces Community or give special consideration for certain cohorts.
• Understanding and adoption of good practice for Covenant delivery and support for the Armed Forces Community.
• Shared understanding of priorities and prioritisation of resources (incl. de-confliction and pooling of resources) to address/prevent disadvantage among the local Armed Forces Community.
• Provision or facilitation of accessible support for the Armed Forces Community.

Our research assessing the extent to which these immediate outcomes are being achieved is ongoing. In the future, we see a need to iterate the Theory of Change approach to facilitate a more robust and evidence-based understanding of the impact of the Covenant.

1.2 Evidence of good practice and progress achieved in Covenant delivery

Recognising the challenges in assessing how well the Covenant is working, we can point to emerging evidence of good practice and impact that the Covenant is having, particularly at the local authority level.

In this context, we first need to recognise the introduction of the legal duty to give due regard to the principles of the Covenant, which was a significant development for local authorities as well as other statutory and non-statutory actors. In our ongoing study - Our Community, Our Covenant and beyond - we found that the legal duty is seen to have had varied impact for local authorities: 

• It is seen as creating a stronger accountability mechanism for local authorities to have due regard for the principles of the Covenant.
• In part due to the stronger accountability mechanism, the legal duty is understood to encourage coherence in local authorities’ activities pertaining to the Covenant and support for the Armed Forces Community, as all local service providers are held against the same expectations regarding Covenant implementation. While previously some local authorities were consistently identified as good performers driving innovation and progress with respect to the Covenant, delivery was more inconsistent among others.  Though empirical evidence of this is limited so far, stakeholders do believe that the duty has helped create a more ‘level-playing field’ in the local authorities’ Covenant delivery.
• The legal duty is also seen as raising awareness of the Covenant among local authority staff, as the Covenant is now embedded in law, attaching greater importance and a legal obligation to give due regard to potential disadvantage among the Armed Forces Community. Many local authorities have parallel efforts to increase awareness of the Covenant among local authority staff, such as through training activities delivered by Armed Forces lead officers.
• The Covenant’s legal duty also serves as a ‘door-opener’ and helps initiate conversations and create buy-in about revising policies and local services to align with the Covenant’s principles.

It should be noted that local authorities have different perceptions of not just the legal duty itself but also its level of impact on their work. This reflects the varying levels of activity that were dedicated to Covenant delivery by local authorities prior to the legal duty’s introduction. We should nevertheless examine the counter-factual perspective to help illuminate the impact of the legal duty and the Covenant at large: would the same progress in reducing or mitigating disadvantages faced by the Armed Forces Community been achieved without the Covenant? From this perspective, many of the stakeholders that we have engaged with during our study share a view that without the Covenant, the same progress in addressing disadvantage and supporting the Armed Forces Community would not have taken place.

While the legal duty places a more consistent expectation on local authorities to have due regard for Covenant principles, relevant government guidance has given local authorities significant flexibility in how the legal duty and the Covenant more widely are implemented in practice. As such, it is known that local authorities and their partners have developed a wide range of delivery models. Our research has sought to map these different models, highlighting the significance of local context in their operation as well as their respective strengths and limitations. Ultimately, this aims to recognise that mechanisms of Covenant delivery should be adapted to the specificities of the local context and what works well one area may not work well in others. Recognising this, we have been able to identify examples of different models that could be scaled to other similar local contexts:

• Covenant implementation in a combined authority setting: We have looked closely at Greater Manchester, where the combined authority acts as a focal point for local government action, information sharing and building strategic relationships. It has dedicated officer resource – this does not replace individual council action but does create economy of scale. Involvement of the elected metro mayor provides an extra political focus at city region level. With the expected expansion of the combined authority model outlined in the recent English Devolution White Paper, combined authority involvement needs careful consideration.
• Armed Forces Liaison Officers: In Wales, the Welsh Government funds seven Armed Forces Liaison Officer posts. These officials work with groups of councils on a sub-regional basis and provide additional support and a regular channel of communication with the Welsh Government. The feedback we have heard is that this helps to create greater consistency in the local support offered.
• Local Covenant funds: From 2023, members of the East Riding of Yorkshire Covenant Delivery Group and sub-groups have been able to bid for grants from a Delivery Group Fund in order to deliver projects supporting members of the Armed Forces Community. It was envisaged that this additional resource would help vulnerable members of the community struggling with a range of issues, including financial, housing, health and wellbeing difficulties, as well as improve awareness of, and access to, support available locally. The scheme provides organisations with funding to aid the delivery of projects that seek to address one or more of the key priorities outlined in the Delivery Group Action Plan, such as ‘strengthening links with schools to raise awareness of the challenges faced by service children and improving access to support’, ‘supporting those in crisis with housing and/or financial difficulties’ or ‘increasing awareness of the Armed Forces Covenant and support available for the local Armed Forces community with healthcare providers, including GPs’.
• Collaboration between local authorities and third-sector partners through a ‘Gateway Model’: Founded in 2010 as a partnership between Glasgow City Council and SSAFA,[8] the Armed Forces charity, Glasgow’s Helping Heroes serves as a ‘Gateway Model’ that seeks to facilitate the Covenant’s implementation through providing a single point of access to a range of in-house specialist services (e.g., housing and homelessness support, employability and professional training, welfare guidance) as well as referrals to a comprehensive pool of third-sector partners. Such a model has been identified as being particularly suited to the city of Glasgow, whose corresponding statutory and non-statutory service landscape is highly complex (Glasgow has over 60 housing associations alone) and can therefore limit the accessibility of dedicated assistance for the Armed Forces Community. By entering into a working relationship with a third-sector partner, the City Council is also able to advance its own efforts to uphold the Covenant. Notably, the provision of monthly performance data from Glasgow’s Helping Heroes offers routine insight into the nature and level of demand among service users and can consequently inform City Council policy.

• Military champions and civil-military coordination: Although most local authorities in England, Scotland, and Wales have a designated Armed Forces Champion and/or Armed Forces Lead Officer, Oxfordshire County Council has supplemented this post with six elected member Military Champions: one designated for each of the Armed Forces establishments in the county. In addition to demonstrating the County Council’s commitment to supporting the Armed Forces Community and upholding the Covenant publicly, this post is designed to improve service provision by acting as a single pathway for information exchange and referrals between the County Council and Oxfordshire’s individual military centres. Our research indicates that the use of Military Champions is especially advantageous in a two-tier local authority area, with the division of responsibilities between the County and District councils often resulting in confusion among service users. Further benefits of the post include the fostering of an in-depth understanding of the support needs of each military base’s community, providing a foundation for assistance that is reflective of Oxfordshire’s diverse military population as well as the county’s varying social and economic geography.

1.3 Evidence of reduced disadvantage faced by the AFC

As raised in Section 1.1, there are significant challenges in measuring levels of disadvantage among the Armed Forces Community accurately. Though some areas of disadvantage can be easily conceptualised and measured with existing data, other areas are inherently more subjective or are not well captured in current data sources. There are also concerns about the quality of data that may help us to understand levels of disadvantage among the Armed Forces Community in comparison to the civilian population, due to various factors such as research fatigue and thus a reluctance of military populations to engage in research and data disclosures. Comparing outcomes of the Armed Forces Community and the wider civilian population is also difficult due to the inconsistent use of outcome measures and limited data which is representative of the Armed Forces Community at large.

Our previous research also identified that the “vast majority of local authorities [who participated in the study] either did not know or did not measure the impact of the Covenant in their service area”.[9] There are therefore significant gaps in local assessments and reporting that could help to map levels of disadvantage in local authority areas. These gaps are not equal across all policy areas where the Covenant may apply. In our study, largest gaps were identified in children’s services, employment, adult social care and education, with 77 percent, 74 percent, 65 percent and 59 percent of participating local authorities disclosing that they did not know or did not measure the impact of the Covenant in these policy areas.[10]

Noting these significant gaps in local assessments, there is also evidence of progress in addressing disadvantage. For example, in the above-mentioned study on the impact of the Covenant:

• 19 percent of local authorities felt that there were fewer veterans in housing crisis;
• 16 percent reported that children had an easier transition between schools; and
• 7 per cent felt that waiting times for members of the AFC for social housing had been reduced.

2.      Where is the Armed Forces Covenant failing the Armed Forces Community?

Similarly to the question of where the Covenant is ‘working well’, there are two perspectives on the question of where it is ‘failing’: an implementation perspective (i.e. persistent challenges with implementing the Covenant) and an outcomes perspective (i.e. persistent areas of disadvantage faced by the Armed Forces Community).

From an implementation perspective, our research has indicated the following prevailing challenges in Covenant implementation:

• There are concerns among stakeholders that the application of the legal duty to some policy areas (i.e. housing, education and healthcare) may lead to the de-prioritisation of work in other areas (e.g. employment). While some stakeholders participating in our research therefore expressed support for extending the Covenant duty to a wider range of policy areas, others cautioned that services such as social care are more complex and under extreme resource pressure, posing questions around how the duty could be ‘deliverable’ in those areas.
• Stakeholders in our research also commented that, despite the added accountability mechanism provided by the legal duty, accountability for delivering the Covenant is still restricted as there are limited consequences for not demonstrating progress on Covenant delivery. This indicates that positive and negative incentives and accountability mechanisms for statutory actors to implement Covenant principles could be strengthened.
• The levels of awareness of the Covenant and the legal duty among local authority staff and other relevant actors remains low in some areas. In relation to schools, for example, stakeholders who participated in our research noted that awareness among school staff of the Covenant is likely to still be limited, reflecting a general lack of awareness about Service children and their needs, coupled with reduced capacity. 
• Awareness of the Covenant and understanding of what it means among members of the Armed Forces Community also remains uneven. The Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Surveys show that a considerable proportion of Armed Forces personnel have never heard about the Covenant (27 percent as of May 2024).[11] Stakeholders participating in our research confirmed this observation with anecdotal evidence of poor understanding of the scope of the Covenant and a mismatch between expectations and reality about what the Covenant means in practice.

Regarding outcomes, in our previous study on the impact of the Covenant, both local authorities and charity organisations were asked to assess the extent of disadvantage across different policy areas. We found that charity organisations tended to provide higher estimates of the extent of disadvantage faced by the community in comparison to local authorities. Though this reflects the inherent role of military charities in providing support for those who may face challenges as a result of disadvantage, it also underscores a need for further awareness-raising about the extent and nature of potential disadvantage among local frontline organisations.[12] Key insights from this research regarding the extent and drivers of disadvantage were:

• Housing: Around 79 per cent of charities participating in the research said the Armed Forces Community faces disadvantages in housing to a small, moderate or great extent. In contrast, 51 per cent of local authorities did not think the community faces any disadvantage in housing.
• Health: The chief risk of disadvantage in healthcare remains the impact of relocation on access to GPs and dentists, as well as the position of family members of Service personnel on waiting lists for health treatments. Though only a small number of veterans and family members participated in the research, many also highlighted poor understanding of the needs of the Armed Forces Community among frontline staff as a leading cause of disadvantage. Potential disadvantages in healthcare may be exacerbated by growing pressures on the capacity of healthcare services.[13]
• Education: Similar to healthcare, high levels of geographic mobility remain a risk for Service children’s educational outcomes and experiences. The disadvantages that Service children can face as a result are compounded by the stress and anxiety that military life can lead to among Service children and a lack of understanding of the demands of Service life and support needs of Service children. Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are identified as a cohort that may face additional challenges and disadvantages, particularly as mobility may disrupt access to SEND services.

From our wider research with the Armed Forces Community, we can also highlight particular areas of vulnerability or disadvantage faced by specific cohorts of (ex)Service personnel and families:

• In our study for the Office for Veterans Affairs, we found that non-UK Service personnel and veterans can face unique pressures and challenges during Service and in transition to civilian life. Although immigration is a frequently discussed topic in relation to this cohort, the community may face unique challenges in accessing employment after discharge as well as in the housing context, among others.[14]
• We similarly know that it is crucial to consider the nature of a Service person’s discharge from the military to understand their potential vulnerability to poor transition outcomes and disadvantage. Early Service leavers and those who are medically discharged are, for example, likely to face greater risks than other cohorts of Service leavers. RAND is currently conducting a study in collaboration with QinetiQ specifically looking at contemporary transition experiences and how the transition process is communicated and perceived among different cohorts of Service leavers.[15]
• With regard to employment, we know from recent data from the Office for Veterans Affairs that the employment rate of ex-Service personnel is comparable to that of the wider civilian population.[16] However, there are gaps in understanding the longer-term employment outcomes (beyond whether a veteran is in employment) among the ex-Service community,[17] and specific cohorts of ex-Service personnel, such as those who are non-UK or those who are medically discharged, may face greater challenges in seeking post-Service employment. In addition, our research on the financial stability of military families confirmed persistent disadvantages and challenges faced by military partners in finding suitable employment and developing careers in the longer term.[18]

3.   What are the main causes for these failings?

At the local authority level, we have identified several challenges in Covenant implementation. These challenges do not explain why there are persistent areas of disadvantage among the Armed Forces Community in isolation. Rather, they help reveal some persistent issues in addressing and mitigating those disadvantages at the local government level: 

• Growing pressures on local government resources: There is a general view that local authorities are being asked to ‘do more with less’. Many local authorities are experiencing increasing pressures on their capacity as a result of growing demand for services and/or an increasing complexity in support needs. This is coupled with decreasing government budgets, challenges in the staffing of public services (e.g., healthcare and education), and conflicting priorities on local government in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., tackling backlogs in service provision). In this context, although many local authorities share a determination and ambition to improve services and support for the Armed Forces Community, limited resources and clashing priorities inhibit authorities’ ability to realise those ambitions.
• Conflicting priorities to provide tailored support: Along with restricting the time, materials, and funding available for supporting members of the Armed Forces Community, growing resource constraints have additionally led many organisations to reassess the strategic priority of the Covenant relative to other responsibilities. Indeed, our research has found that several statutory service providers have encountered a reluctance (and, in some cases, resistance) among key decision-makers to dedicate increasingly scarce resource to supporting specific populations as this may jeopardise the delivery of other core activities. As a result, there has been a notable reduction in tailored and/or funded support for the Armed Forces Community across local authority areas, apart from provision which is mandated by the legal duty.
• Break-down of collaborative Covenant delivery: Limited resource and funding availability has similarly impacted third-sector organisations seeking to build upon the services provided by statutory bodies for the Armed Forces Community. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that a reduction in local and national funding opportunities combined with a proliferation in the number of dedicated Armed Forces charities have limited efforts to further support the Covenant in several areas. Although in some cases this has prompted organisations to pool their available resources and work together, in others it has increased competition and reluctance to enter into partnerships due to a fear of losing or diluting existing funding streams. Such protectionist tendencies have not only hindered the strategic coordination of Covenant-related activity in some regions but also caused the fracturing of crucial referral pathways in some contexts.
• Reliance on individuals and personalities: There is a wide range of models used by local authorities for Covenant delivery, which vary in terms of the formality of underpinning structures. In some instances, particularly of less formalised structures, we have seen an apparent reliance on personalities and individuals’ personal dedication to work related to the Armed Forces. Although individuals in roles such as Covenant Officers and Champions contribute significantly to the Covenant’s implementation, a reliance on personalities presents challenges from the perspective of the long-term sustainability of Covenant implementation and retention of relevant knowledge and expertise. Nonetheless, the introduction of the legal duty may be mitigating some of these challenges by helping to embed the Covenant into local government organisations.
• Ability to identify the Armed Forces Community: Lastly, as already discussed in Section 1, there are various challenges around data and the ability of local authorities to identify members of the Armed Forces Community, understand their potential support needs, and assessing what impact Covenant-related work is having, in order to identify effective practices. Though frontline staff are expected to ‘ask the question’ of whether a beneficiary is a member of the Armed Forces Community in many organisations, enabling service providers to do this systematically can require significant adjustments in internal systems and processes, as well as effective communication with the community itself to ensure members understand why they are being asked to self-identify. Inconsistencies in ‘asking the question’ present an obvious challenge to building a robust evidence-base to understand the extent and nature of disadvantage and how effectively Covenant-related activities are addressing it.

24th January 2025