8th Annual Resettlement Report

With a reasonably consistent rate of better than 95 per cent since 2000, the number of Service leavers finding employment within six months of discharge is very high. Indeed, 70 per cent of CTP’s customers find a job within one month of leaving and only 10 per cent take more than four months to become employed. Director Resettlement attributes a recent wobble to more leavers, due to redundancy, entering a tighter labour market.

These figures would be trumpeted by most civilian outplacement firms, and suggest that the claims made by the MoD about its investment in its Service people’s training and their high quality are found to be true by their next employers. However, leavers should also note that the vast majority (80 per cent) of starting salaries they accept fall between £10,000 and £30,000 a year, with some 40 per cent between the £15,000 and £20,000 mark. What is not known is how quickly these individuals move to a better-paid job, or the timescale of subsequent pay rises.

So the message seems to be that Service leavers can find employment reasonably easily, provided they access the help available through the system, but that they should be prepared for an initial reduction in salary until they have proved their worth. This makes perfect sense from the point of view of the civilian employer. They are taking on someone from a background they probably know little about, and they want to see them perform before making a heavy investment.

Annual resettlement reports are produced to inform people about policy developments and initiatives, provide information and statistics about performance, and identify matters arising that call for action. This report is the eighth to be issued and is the first since the new ten-year contract with Right Management started in October 2005. Headline issues are the development of local and national integration of training and job-finding services, and more comprehensive performance measurement linked to bonus payments.

The new contract also integrates the new Joint Employment Partnership (JEP), a company formed by the Officers’ Association (OA) and the Regular Forces Employment Association (RFEA), fully with Right Management. JEP provides a single focus for the delivery of job-finding assistance to Service leavers included the contract (within two years of discharge). And, in a move that boosts the employment prospects of people who left the Armed Forces more than two years ago and who use the OA and RFEA through their charitable charters, employment consultants now have access to the TriSys database and the web-based job finding tool, RightJob.

With the disbandment over the next two years of the Royal Irish (Home Service) battalions, some 3,000 extra Service leavers have been added to the CTP’s annual throughput. Timeframes are tight and the process has to be adapted to suit Northern Ireland’s unique circumstances. The expanded resettlement organisation has to cope with an increase in activity of some 400 per cent over normal levels.

For years the use of the word ‘eligibility’ has been confusing in the resettlement context. It could be interpreted in different ways and a few unfortunates lost out because their commanders maintained that they might be ‘eligible’ for things but that they were not theirs by right. From 1 March this year, people became ‘entitled’ to receive resettlement support including both time and money. People deployed on operations will not necessarily be sent home early to receive their entitlement, but they will be able to defer their leaving date and thus access their full entitlement at the end of their tour.

Quest has already reported the tightening of the regime governing overseas resettlement and a digest can be found in ‘Factfile’. However, it is still possible to take the entitlement overseas if there is no equivalent training providing a similar outcome available locally, and that the total costs are no more than they would be if the training was undertaken locally.

A major change has been the near doubling of the Individual Resettlement Training Costs grant from £534 to £1,018, which will come into effect on 1 April 2008. However, this depends on an overall reduction in resettlement subsistence costs that will at least match the increase. To achieve this, more resettlement training needs to be undertaken close to the Service leaver’s home or unit. So, the CTP’s newly appointed Regional Employment and Training Managers will take the lead in finding local training providers delivering courses that suit local employment needs and shortfalls. [Editor: It will also encourage leavers to build up networks close to where they want to live, which will in turn help in their job hunt.]

The Early Service Leavers (ESL) initiative was launched in April 2004 to establish the employment and social prospects of people who had been administratively discharged, or who left the Services before completing training. They generally have no access to CTP services, but they do at least receive a resettlement briefing and an interview with a ‘competent officer’ before they leave. If they seem likely to become socially excluded (jobless, homeless, etc.) they are directed to civilian and charitable agencies that can help, like JobCentre Plus, the Joint Service Housing Advice Office, SSAFA and the Royal British Legion.

Attempts to establish the scale of the ESL social exclusion problem continue. Initial findings, which are inconclusive, suggest that more than half of ESLs do not register with the Department of Work and Pensions and so are likely to be ‘economically active’ (in work). However, the project continues and more reliable findings should be available in the next resettlement report.

There is also concern about some issues ‘creating barriers to the timely, integrated and seamless handover of care of those leaving the Armed Forces’ on medical discharge. Indeed, the figures show that nearly a quarter of them do not register for the full resettlement package to which they are all entitled. The aim is to make things as easy and consistent as possible for the injured or ill Service person and to ensure that they receive the full programme of help. This requires medically discharged people and their advisers to be fully informed about war pensions and compensation that may guide their resettlement options, and access by CTP career advisers to medically sensitive information about individuals’ physical and mental conditions to guide employment and training advice.

During 2005/06 more than 23,000 people left the Armed Forces, 18,000-plus (78 per cent) of them fully trained. Eighty per cent of the trained outflow had completed their engagement or volunteered to leave early, 13 per cent were discharged compulsorily, 6 per cent mere medically discharged and 1 per cent died. Of the 22 per cent of the whole from the untrained strength, 89 per cent wanted to go or were compulsorily discharged, 11 per cent left medically and just four people were dead.

From the trained strength outflow figure, more than 12,000 people were entitled to the full CTP resettlement provision (albeit with differing periods of graduated resettlement time), while another 2,000-plus were entitled to the employment support programme only. This left the best part of 4,000 leavers entitled only to some measure of single-Service resettlement assistance. Incidentally, the RAF has a significantly greater proportion of people completing a full career than its sister Services.

The proportion of people entitled to the full resettlement programme was just 56 per cent in 1999/2000 and then increased to being consistently around 75 per cent between 2000/01 and 2004/05. According to this year’s report (2005/06) it has shot up to just under 87 per cent. The report attributes this to increasing recognition of the CTP programme’s value among Service leavers, and some 570 redundant leavers who were entitled to the full provision.

The percentage of people entitled to employment support only who took up this option has fluctuated from 40 per cent to nearly 70 per cent since 2001/02. This year’s figure of 58 per cent, however, improves on last year’s 52 per cent while some individuals entitled to the full programme continue to access only the employment support element. Overall, 94 per cent of Service leavers accessed some or all of the CTP assistance available – by some margin the best result since statistics first became available.

Around 10 per cent of Service people who registered for the full resettlement package actually re-engaged for a further term of service before they left. This figure is consistent with previous years and means that around 1,000 people who had not come to their final possible date of service decided to continue – a valuable saving of trained manpower.

Some 50 Service leavers who were entitled to CTP resettlement support chose not to take advantage of any of the facilities available – a reduction on last year. The figure is probably largely explained by the people who secure employment and give up their resettlement entitlement so that they can leave the Service early. There is also a handful of Service leavers who do not wish to work again and they may also not be included in the resettlement statistics.

The CTP generated a total of more than 25,000 employment vacancies, which was 900 or so fewer than the 2004/05 figure. It is probable that a more competitive labour market contributed to this change, as did an increasing tendency for large organisations to recruit through agencies.

But, to return to the title of this article, the success rate is truly remarkable and reflects both the success of the contract and the overall quality of Service leavers.