Veterans UK
Note: This page does not contain any personal postal address or phone number.
Any such details shown in search engine results are outdated and incorrect.
What is AFCS? - Updated Content (No Personal Contact Details)
Go facilitate access to 'em tiger!
Veterans UK
On the Veterans UK website, in the 'About us’ section, under the heading 'Who we are’ it says:
"We provide compensation, pension and welfare support to serving personnel and veterans and facilitate access to appropriate support from other government departments, local authorities, independent bodies and the charity sector."
It used to say they “help [us] get appropriate support from other government departments, local authorities, independent bodies and the charity sector,” but they obviously realised that was a fallacy and changed it up to wank word bingo corporate speak for sounding like they do something while abdicating responsibility. It would have been much faster for me to make a website “facilitating access” by just listing a load of links on a webpage, but it wouldn’t really be very helpful, would it?
I am biased. I am bitter. I have finished the process, yet I still frequently discuss with my therapist the additional damage done by the process of interacting with Veterans UK.
Dealing with Veterans UK, even through a solicitor made me angry, upset, anxious, fidgety and a myriad other horrible feelings, often for weeks after the interaction. Following the worst interactions, when the Medical Advisors were condescending and dismissive, and their decisions had considerable impact on the timescale of the claim, I self-harmed.
I try not to be too anti-VUK, but they do make it hard. There's an expression used occasionally by those who, rightly or wrongly, feel aggrieved by the process of the scheme: "Delay, Deny and hope you Die. Personally, I don’t believe that Veterans UK are practicing this. I might be naive, but I don't think the people who go to work at the Veterans UK office think like that.
In defence of Veterans UK…
Just kidding!
No but really… As I said above, I think there are extremely few people that go to work to make other people’s lives difficult. (There are not many Veterans UK Medical Advisors.)
Unfortunately there is very little outward engagement from the organisation, so it’s almost impossible to gauge their standing and ethos. They may be under pressure, overwhelmed, and understaffed, or they may sit around eating cakes, riding donkeys and drinking the tears of rejected applicants.
In the early months(!) of my application I used to console myself at the delays by imagining there were two kindly old folk, like the knitting nanas from the Shreddies adverts, in a small portacabin trying to wade through all the applications.
I later imagined Veterans UK weekly meetings (not the knitting nanas this time, normal office staff) consisting of all the case handlers around a boardroom table, and a winged demon from the MoD or the Treasury hunched angrily on the table, telling the case handlers they’d be eaten if they didn’t cut AFCS expenditure immediately.
My guess is, based on the information in the formal decisions I’ve had and the way those decisions were written, the case handlers are out of their depth with complicated legal processes and a mixture of medical and military language and acronyms. Their decision making is then strongly led by the Medical Advisors’ reports, and the MA's confidently assert to know all the medicine and the law. They don’t, and their overconfident pronouncements are a massive part of the problem.
Remember too that the case handlers will have to deal with claims which may not necessarily be dishonest but just don't fit the Scheme. For example, injuries from some specific situations are excluded. These include injuries from social events, travel to and from work, and the majority of slips, trips, and falls. As ever there are included exceptions, and these are explained in JSP 765 at paragraphs 2.4 and 2.21 - 2.34. Applicants are likely to feel just as angry to be refused an award, even though by the letter of the law they do not qualify.
There are also likely to be chancers, and the case handlers need to try and make sure they are not making awards to people who don't qualify. They are probably trying to make fair awards while under pressure to save costs. It's unlikely to be an easy job and it may not pay that much.
Bob from the Treasury makes his monthly visit to Veterans UK
Medical Advisors
What little the VUK case handlers write is all in deference to the Medical Advisors.
JSP 765 calls the case handlers ‘decision-makers’ but this is a misnomer. The decisions are made by the Medical Advisors, and the decision 'maker' fills in the forms.
I used to say that I had a great deal less time for the Medical Advisors than the rest of the VUK staff based on my experience of the handling of my claim. My opinion has worsened significantly since the end of my claim.
I think the MAs are dangerous, incompetent, overreaching, self-important, arrogant charlatans.
You may note from most of this site that while I am often critical, I frequently mitigate or offer counterarguments to my own position out of fairness and simple good practice when presenting arguments about anything. I have admitted I’m bitter and hurt, but that most people don’t go to work to cause harm; that although flawed, the AFCS is a good, well intentioned scheme; that although more than half of the decisions made by VUK are statistically wrong, they likely have a Treasury Demon on their backs telling them to keep costs down.
I just can’t do that for the MAs. It’s not only my own experience, which is bloody horrible, but so many other people have told me about their experiences. Some of those people are knowledgeable clinicians themselves that understand medicine and psychiatry. A coroner has formally criticised Veterans UK MAs to the Ministry of Defence and requested a formal response as to how the MoD would prevent similar future deaths. Their performance of their duties is atrocious.
The initial decision I received from my application was like a kid's homework they’d done on the bus to school. In fact it wasn’t even that good.
The Foreword to JSP 765 says that:
“the policies and processes [in the JSP] are to be followed precisely; this is an area that must be correctly implemented.”
That’s pretty clear. It’s an order, not just to follow the policies and processes, but to do so precisely. It was deemed so important that ordering it done was not sufficient, the drafters felt it necessary to reassert the importance by stating it "must be correctly implemented." It is essential. This foreword has been repeated in each update, and is still extant in V.11.0.
Would there be the outstanding issues with the scheme if that order had been followed? If the imperative of correctly implementing the policies and processes of the AFCS had been carried out as ordered, would:
there be a success rate of 51% of all appeals over the whole life of the AFCS?
a Coroner have had to write a Regulation 28 Report to Prevent Future Deaths requiring a response from MoD?
Owen Thompson MP have had to request a Parliamentary debate about the AFCS and WPS?
Johnny Mercer have said that he’d rarely seen anyone have success with the scheme without a lawyer?
JSP 765 has such lofty and difficult aspirations as “delivering consistent and equitable outcomes,” “working together to maximise the individual’s wellbeing,” and even having transparency as a key consideration. Yet even such loosely defined objectives cannot objectively be viewed as being achieved by Veterans UK.
Outcomes are only ever close to equitable when appealed to tribunal, with most appellants having to pay large fees to lawyers to get that outcome, making it inequitable. A 51% success rate of such appeals over 20+ years of the scheme only demonstrates the application of the Scheme being consistently shit.
Working together for an individual’s wellbeing? There has been the most significant report a coroner can make following the death of someone involved with Veterans UK’s AFCS applications.
Transparency? Even with Parliamentary FOIs they won’t tell you the specialisations of Medical Advisors, but none of them are shrinks, yet they overrule psychiatrists and psychologists who have looked scheme applicants in the eyes and written detailed reports on their symptoms and conditions. They make Dr Nick look like House and the Man from Del Monte. And they never say yes.
Later in the JSP in Chapter 2 when dealing with Claims Assessment it says:
“Factual evidence from treating clinicians is invaluable but by their nature they are advocates for their patients and are rarely familiar with scheme legislation.”
I can accept that. But treating clinicians are also specifically trained in their field, and many of them do have experience of the AFCS legislation, especially as so many people have to keep going back to them for an opinion on their condition in relation to their AFCS claim, especially because of the unnatural time limits imposed by the scheme.
The JSP continues:
“DBS medical advisers have typically had a career in clinical medicine, e.g. general practice or psychiatry, and are trained in medico-legal determinations and the AFCS legislation. They give advice, with reasons, based on the case-specific service and medical facts and in line with contemporary medical understanding of the causes and progress of injuries and disorders.”
This must have been the intention, but to suggest it reflects reality would be utter bollocks.
The MAs may have had a career in clinical medicine. I had a career in front line military operations. I’m not going to read through the battle plans of Colonel Maximilian-Berk or Admiral Splashington-Jones and tell the Secretary of State that those plans are shit, which is exactly what the VUK MAs are doing. None of them are psychiatrists, and they won’t tell us what their specialities are. But they are content to overrule specialists in psychiatry and psychology, saying they know better based on a paperwork review rather than an in person consultation. Once they’ve submitted this nonsense, you’re then shuffled to the back of the queue to appeal.
Veterans UK said to me that their “doctors are intentionally not necessarily specialist in the claimed or appealed injury or disorder category.” So, they’re not consultant grade clinical psychologists or psychiatrists, they’re not even clinical psychologists or psychiatrists, yet they’re happy to paraphrase and change the meaning of comments by the clinical psychologists and psychiatrists we’ve seen. I feel like I’m making this up as I’m writing this, I honestly can’t believe this is so dodgy.
As for being “trained in medico-legal determinations,” this is also bollocks. You can’t learn medical law on a short course. Just because the AFCS is a self contained scheme based on one piece of legislation, does not mean the legal aspects of it are less complicated than a civil clinical negligence claim. If your appeal goes to tribunal, or the upper tribunal, or even in very rare cases the Court of Appeal, the Veterans UK Defence Business Services Medical Advisors are not going to don a wig and start giving it Sir, Ma’am, M’Lord, M’Lady in court. They’re tucked safely away in their Club or the 19th Hole, sweeping some Frazzles and Scampi Fries crumbs off their lap while dismissing another claim from the backlog with conjecture dressed up as reasons. MoD will meanwhile instruct a barrister at considerable public expense to do the medico-legal bit despite having salaried legal branches in each service.
As a former healthcare solicitor I have a decent grasp of medico-legal principles. I’m not a doctor of any speciality, so when I represented an NHS Trust at inquest or in a clinical negligence claim, I instructed expert clinicians in the relevant speciality. Those experts deferred to lawyers regarding the law, and those experts would not stray from their medical speciality. A neurosurgeon would not give expert opinion on orthopaedics; a plastic surgeon would not opine on haematology; and a GP would not pass expert opinion on psychiatry, because they’re not an expert in that branch of medicine. A judge would not even let it past a planning hearing in a civil claim.
The JSP says that the process of determining a claim is supposed to be inquisitorial and not adversarial, i.e. Veterans UK should ask questions, get factual answers, and not have a back and forth argument about what the right answer is. Our court procedures are deliberately adversarial, with each side represented by a lawyer arguing their side’s case (within the bounds of reality) and the judge deciding which side’s case is strongest. It is clear, however, that this bit was not included in the medico-legal principles the MAs were trained on, and they have misinterpreted the rule as their answers to the questions are right, whether or not they are factual and / or based on the expertise of clinicians more knowledgeable, skilled or experienced than they are. The AFCS process was designed not to be onerous, but it most definitely is. It’s exhausting.
© 2025. All rights reserved.
