Supporting sustained delivery of the Armed Forces Covenant

Abstract: The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust (AFCFT) commissioned RAND Europe to review projects conducted by 19 groups (or ‘clusters’) of Local Authorities (LAs) who received grants from the AFCFT’s Sustaining Delivery Programme. Part of this review aimed to answer the following question: What examples of good practice and lessons identified demonstrate how LAs, with limited amount of funding, have been able to implement measures to deliver the Covenant in a comprehensive and sustainable manner? This document describes practices grantees used in the Sustaining Delivery cluster led by Kingston upon Hull City Council (hereafter referred to as ‘Hull’). It is one of three documents RAND Europe produced to share examples of practices that might help others deliver the Covenant now that it has become a statutory duty. This document is intended as an educational summary highlighting the practices that Hull cluster grantees considered helpful and useful in executing their projects, hopefully enabling others to strengthen further the Armed Forces Covenant’s implementation in their area. This document does not consider funding and cost; the practices it includes are agnostic of funding, which falls outside this review’s scope. We compiled all evidence and material in this document through literature reviews, surveys and semistructured interviews with relevant stakeholders, including those working in the Hull cluster. This summary is based entirely on evidence from the research described in RAND Europe’s full research report. For more information about the research, including the specific sources used to gather evidence and the wider evaluation RAND Europe conducted, please consult the full final project report, ‘Findings from the Sustaining Delivery of the Armed Forces Covenant Programme’, available through AFCFT.