Recommendation 4

Implementation of the Covenant Legal Duty varies considerably across the UK. In some places the Legal Duty has resulted in the creation of new policies and initiatives that have tangibly improved the lives of the forces community; in others the Duty appears to have changed very little. As a result, people’s experiences of the Covenant are very different depending on where they live, which services or organisations they interact with and which individual member of staff in an organisation they speak to. This is frustrating for people in the forces community, and gives them the impression that the Covenant is a hollow commitment. The Government wants to expand the scope of the Covenant, and we understand the reasons 26 for this. However, equal attention must be given to ensuring that the Legal Duty is consistently and appropriately applied and translates into better outcomes for people in the forces community. (Conclusion, Paragraph 20)