The British military families being failed by their country

Telegraph

28-04-2025

When Holly Parish's* husband was posted from Salisbury Plain to Aldershot halfway through the academic year four years ago, she immediately rang round the primary schools in the area to find school places for her eldest two children. The only places available were in two separate schools, one either side of Aldershot. When Parish asked how she was supposed to drop children in two places at the same time in the morning, she was told by the local authority that she would need to book one or both of her children into breakfast and after-school clubs that she'd have to fund herself. The alternative, she was told, was to home-school them, for which no financial support was available.
Desperate, Parish tried calling primary schools in nearby Pirbright, seven miles down the road, where all three schools offered her places for both her children. Parish and her husband ended up begging the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to house them in Pirbright, although 'it took so long that we didn't have an address until two weeks before we moved'. The family then had to buy a second car so that Parish's husband could get to work each day.
The whole experience, says Parish now, was so stressful that she ended up on antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication.
Families such as Parish's are supposed to be protected in situations such as these by the Armed Forces Covenant, an official 'promise by the nation' that those who serve in the military, of all services and all ranks, and their families, will not be disadvantaged or treated unfairly 'in the provision of public and commercial services' – that is, access to health care, education, housing, employment or financial services – given that military families inevitably forgo some of the rights enjoyed by ordinary civilians.
The Covenant, originally an unspoken pact between the military and society based on a duty of care that dates back as far as Tudor times, was formally codified in 2000, and its principles were first enshrined into law in 2011, when every local authority in Britain signed it. Initially, it officially applied only to the Army, although now covers all three services.
In practice, it's supposed to mean that if, for example, someone is posted to a new location halfway through the academic year, their children won't have to suffer when it comes to school places. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also supposed to adhere to the Covenant; the Armed Forces Act 2021 introduced a new requirement in law for some public bodies, including the NHS and local authorities, to 'pay due regard' to its principles when carrying out specific public functions in the areas of housing, health care and education.
The reality, however, is that the Covenant is falling far short of what it's supposed to do. A new report published by the House of Commons' Defence Select Committee on April 8, which drew on almost 100 pieces of written, oral and reported evidence to an official inquiry, found that the Covenant is misunderstood, being inconsistently applied, and in many cases disregarded altogether, meaning that military personnel and their families are being disadvantaged.
'The majority of evidence we received was negative,' says Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough who chairs the committee. 'Patchy implementation of the Covenant was a consistent theme. People feel it's nothing more than a gimmick.'
Talk to almost any member of the Armed Forces, serving or veteran, or any military family, and you'll hear much the same sentiment – along with any number of stories as to when the Covenant has fallen short. 'When we moved last, the local head teachers hadn't even heard of it and told us they had no intention of going above the quota of 30 [children in a class] in Key Stage 1 for a military child, so our three boys were split between two schools,' says Camilla Rogers*.
'Luckily our local primary got a new head a year later who had worked with military families before, and the three children were reunited into one school. What saddens me is that there are so many people out there that haven't heard of the Covenant or simply don't care.'
The Defence committee's report contains multiple similar stories, especially concerning those moving back to the UK from a posting abroad, or families whose children have additional needs: one family had a six-week wait to find a suitable educational setting for their child post-move; another anonymous contributor said the mission of finding a place in a good school for their children each time they moved had been so great that they had ultimately decided to send their children to a boarding school, against their preference.
Finding NHS doctors or dentists is a similar challenge for many military families – the report heard evidence from one family who, having finally managed to get a place at an NHS dentist in 2021, went on to move locations twice, so chose just to stay with the practice and haul the entire family across the country every six months for a check-up. When it comes to waiting for treatment for an ongoing medical issue, meanwhile, many find they go back to the bottom of the queue with every new posting.
Those working in the devolved administrations come up against even more issues: the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, David Johnstone, told the inquiry that the current political make-up of the Northern Ireland Executive meant there is limited implementation of the Covenant because 'the largest party [Sinn Fein] just refuses to acknowledge and engage with anything around the Armed Forces Covenant'.
'Here in NI, the Covenant only applies to the serving person, not their dependents – which they don't tell you before you come,' says Parish, whose husband's next posting after Aldershot was to Belfast. Parish has been unable to find NHS dentists to take any of the family on, and has ended up having to pay for military Bupa cover. 'It's been a nightmare, to be honest.'
This, say many of those involved in the debate about the Covenant, is the real issue: that it's not the serving personnel who are most disadvantaged by their jobs but their families – the ones who are expected to decamp to a new town and immediately need access to school places, dentists and doctors. 'A lot of the Covenant is a very big sticking plaster, quite frankly,' says Collette Musgrave, the chief executive of the Army Families Federation, a lobbying charity that works to question and influence policy on behalf of British Army families around the world. And, she adds, one of the biggest issues is that the MoD itself not only acts as if the Covenant doesn't apply to it when it comes to considering policy, but that it doesn't pay attention to the ways in which military decisions affect families.
'I think the military don't know enough about families,' agrees Lt Gen Sir Nick Pope, who retired from the Army in 2020, now chairs Cobseo, the military charities confederation, and refers to the Covenant as a 'bumper sticker – an aiming mark but not a strategic outcome'.
Of his own time in the military, he says, he lived in 31 different married quarters; in one 14-month period, he had five different postings, each of which required his family to move with him. 'The system does not think about the family consequences at all.' Nor, he adds, are things properly joined up, because the status of Forces agreements are all different in different countries, which means, for example, that if a family is posted to Kenya, regardless of what rank the serving person is, there will be restrictions on spousal employment – which in turn means that a spouse loses out on not just income but pension contributions too.
Labour's manifesto before the last election included a commitment to put the Armed Forces Covenant 'fully into law'; John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, has said that this will happen in the next Armed Forces Bill, to be introduced in the next session of Parliament. This would mean, says Dhesi, that all government departments would be obliged to pay due regard to the Covenant, from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to the Home Office, which he believes 'would help to focus the minds of policymakers in various departments. We want to make sure that includes the devolved governments.'
But the ongoing issue is not just that the Covenant is not unilaterally recognised, but that, even for those organisations such as local authorities that are legally obliged to 'pay due regard' to its principles, in practice that means nothing – and is not enforceable. Although campaigners hope that extending the legal duty across all government departments will help, ''due regard' is not determined or defined,' points out Musgrave. 'Is bringing it into law really going to make it work across the board without any enforcement?' Unlikely – as enforcing it would basically be impossible.
'Fundamentally, it's a political statement of intent, but what it isn't is a delivery plan,' says Pope bluntly. 'It lacks the connection between great words and meaningful actions.'
Because the intent is there, service families are in a better place than they were 15 years ago, he says. But looking after our Armed Forces – and their families – matters. 'Why? Because we're losing too many young soldiers.' In the 12 months to December 2024, 14,830 personnel left the Armed Forces, 61 per cent for voluntary reasons; the most recent Armed Forces satisfaction survey found that the proportion of personnel rating their service morale as low had increased for the third year in a row, up from 42 per cent in 2021 to 58 per cent in 2024.
'You've got to double down,' says Pope, 'and make sure both the focus and the policy is in the right place.' Britain quite literally depends on it.