Stuart Harvey

Restore Britain - JUST IN: Veterans’ housing must be planned before discharge under its new proposal. 🇬🇧 Restore Britain, the political party led by Rupert Lowe, has just proposed a legal duty to plan housing for people leaving the Armed Forces without a home to go to. The proposed duty would sit with the Ministry of Defence and a new Department of Veterans’ Affairs, making both responsible for a housing plan before discharge. Leaving military service is a known change in someone’s life, so the question of where they will live belongs in the preparation for leaving. It should be answered while the military and civilian services can arrange that move together. Restore Britain and Rupert Lowe deserve support for putting that responsibility on the organisations making the handover, rather than leaving the former serviceman or woman to join up the pieces afterwards. The party pairs this with a proposed legal priority for veterans in social housing and homelessness services across the UK. Restore Britain-led councils would put veterans and qualifying bereaved or dependent families in the highest reasonable priority category, subject to urgent safeguarding and emergency needs. A plan tells the responsible services what they need to arrange; priority tells them how a qualifying veteran should be treated when housing is allocated. The party also proposes bringing the existing specialist homelessness service for veterans into its new department, linked to local Veterans Officers. That would connect help for somebody already at risk with the organisation responsible for the wider housing policy. One detail makes the proposal more serious than a loose promise to put veterans first: Restore Britain would require local housing schemes to publish how their veteran priority works. A veteran should be able to see the rule that applies to their application, and the party proposes making the Veterans Officer responsible for challenging failures to apply it. England has already removed the requirement for former Armed Forces members to have a local connection when seeking social housing, so Restore Britain is proposing a further step. For a person leaving service without somewhere to live, the decisive question is what has been arranged before the leaving date arrives.