Learning from our experiences together – further updates

Veterans UK is responsible for administering compensation and pensions schemes for both serving personnel, veterans and their families, as well as the Veterans Welfare and Defence Transition Services. However, did you know that Veterans UK is part of the Ministry of Defence’s shared services delivery organisation, Defence Business Services?

As well our veterans services, in DBS we also look after Pay, HR, and lots more in-between for the Armed Forces Community. So, chances are that if you have served even one day in the UK Armed Forces, you will have used the services of DBS.

In Veterans UK we know that we can continuously improve how we provide our services and make your experience of Veterans UK and DBS a better one. We can’t do that without listening to the people that have or could use our services, and better understand what we can do to help you.

We have taken the results of our DBS Veterans Customer Satisfaction Survey and alongside those, invited many members of the armed forces and veterans communities, and their advocates, to ‘Lived Experience’ events, where senior leaders and staff from Veterans UK have listened to feedback and suggestions on what they need from us directly from veterans and supporting organisations.

We are committed to enhancing our services where we can and playing our part to deliver on the Government’s Veterans’ Strategy Action Plan 2022/24 and we have been working hard to address some of the key points raised through the feedback we have received as part of our promise to continuously improve.

Our end users told us that they want and need more information about how the compensation scheme claim and appeals processes work.

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. The diagrams show what information is needed to accurately consider an application and where we get that from, in order to ensure that claimants receive what they are eligible for and entitled to, in accordance with legislation.

We want to be transparent and by sharing what we do with each of the claims, we hope that we can work together, with our end users, to ensure their claims are dealt with quickly and accurately.

Armed Forces Compensation Scheme: claims and appeals – Customer Journey Maps

As part of Veterans UK’s continued commitment to enhancing our services, we have also produced a similar suite of diagrams to help customers with the Armed Forces Pension Scheme (AFPS). These maps will illustrate the flow of various processes within the scheme, such as Early Payment of Preserved Pension (EPPP) and Internal Dispute Resolution Procedure (IDRP), so that customers can see the end-to-end process regarding their Armed Forces Pension.

Armed Forces Pension Scheme – Customer Journey Maps

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