Veterans Mental Health – AFCS – The Battle Continues

As most readers of our blog know, the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) was enacted in April 2005 to provide a simple route to financial settlement for our brave servicemen and women, whose injuries and illnesses had been ‘caused by service'.

The scheme is labelled by Veterans UK (the part of the MOD which operates it) as a non-adversarial no-fault compensation scheme. In my 20+ years of representing the gravely injured and the families of those killed in service, I can report that this scheme is anything but. There are plenty of examples. Denying an award to the medically discharged for being deafened is just the tip of the iceberg (honestly, you couldn’t make it up!).

This blog concerns one important issue - Mental Health awards under the scheme – mainly PTSD.

Not every man and woman who has served will consequently suffer with serious issues of mental ill health. Most veterans transition to civilian life very successfully. I am instead concerned with our true combat veterans, those who have experienced real bloodshed, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of whom are very sick indeed.

Below is a screenshot of Table 3 of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. For your information, a Level 10 tariff lump sum award is £27,810. Under Table 3, this is the 30% starting point for a GIP (Guaranteed Income Payment – a fixed percentage of final salary) which is payable when military service ends to ‘recognise loss of future earnings due to the injury or illness’.

The higher the tariff award, the greater the % GIP of the veterans relevant salary. In times of austerity, an increase of 20% (a Level 8 award is 50%) is a mortgage payment for most of us.

Regardless of how long the veteran has suffered with PTSD, when first applying, assuming Veterans UK accept that the applicant is eligible (a battle all of its own) they tend to make only an interim award at Levels 12 or 13 (no GIP) and say that they will re-assess in a couple of years’ time. The legislation, which favours the MOD, not the veteran, prevents any challenge to an interim award. Some slip through the net and are not re-assessed. I know this.

In the cases that I have been instructed upon, none of my seriously troubled veterans had/have been found eligible by Veterans UK to qualify for an award greater than Level 10. Why not, you may ask. Are they fully recovered?

Those cases progress to a tribunal hearing and I hope we will win, but meanwhile, it had begun to concern me to such a great degree that I felt I needed to ask some difficult questions.

Do Veterans UK actually make AFCS awards for a permanent mental health disorder, of even a moderate nature, which has lasted longer than 5 years?

I lodged a Freedom of Information Act request. Okay, I accepted that this could backfire.

The answer has landed.

In the five years from April 2017 to March 2022, of the 2,180 mental health claims awarded by Veterans UK under Table 3 of the scheme, only 23 (twenty three) qualified for an award greater than Level 10. In fact, there has been only 5 (five) in the last 3 years:

I find these figures both incredible and worrying in equal terms. Either there are no permanently scarred veterans of the Middle East campaigns or, something is awry.

My money is on the latter.

I would prefer to lose that wager.

Grant Evatt

Before a second career as a lawyer, Grant served with 29 Commando Regiment RA. He has specialised in military injury claims for over two decades and is an authority in this complex area.