A very civil servant
Kathy Barnes joined the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency just over six months ago after more than 20 years working for Customs and Excise (now HM Revenue and Customs). Legion caught up with Kathy to ask about the challenges she faces as a ‘civvy’ in a military environment
This is the first time you’ve worked with the armed forces. What attracted you to the role?
The idea of working with the armed forces and veterans has always appealed to me, and the SPVA is the only dedicated agency for them. All my previous roles have been customer-based, so I know all about the importance of good customer service. I wanted to be able to bring my experience into another area, and this is one of the most important customer groups you can get. The SPVA is hugely diverse
in the work it does, so it seemed like the kind of place I would enjoy working. So far, I have been proved right.
What changes have you made so far to ensure SPVA customers receive good service?
I’ve not made any wholesale changes, it’s more a case of continuing to focus on the good things that we offer to service personnel and veterans. Because we were two agencies that merged (the Veterans Agency and the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency, which joined together to form the SPVA in April 2007) I have been trying to ensure that what we offer is delivered in the best way possible. One thing I have done is hold two staff conferences, where I have got people together from across the agency, regardless of their grade, to discuss the services that we offer. We’ve also invited some of our customers along to each of these conferences, to let us know what they think about our services. That has been really powerful in helping us understand what we need to do. My staff are a very diverse group of people, some work for a contractor, some are civil servants and some are military. I want to capture the best from all of them.
What’s been the biggest challenge for you?
Learning all the language, jargon and rank structure that comes with working with the armed forces. It was a foreign language to me when I first arrived. It’s a bit less so now. I still have my moments, but I have a great team I can ask. Because I’m a civilian in a military world, people don’t expect me to know it all. It can be an advantage for me, as they don’t expect me to refer to them by their title; they are happy for me to call them by their first name, and I am happy for them to do the same for me. I find you can relate to people better that way.
Have you had an opportunity to go out and meet members of the armed forces community?
It was all I did during my first few weeks. In my first week, I went out on the road and did all sorts of wonderful things like go on aircraft carriers and in helicopters and armoured personnel vehicles, and in doing so, I got to meet the personnel themselves, who could tell me how things really are for them. They have all been fantastically helpful as they’ve been straight with me about the things that go right and the things that go wrong.
So what are service personnel unhappy about?
The Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system (a web-based personnel administration system used by all three of the armed forces) seems to be an issue for a lot of them. It gets blamed for a lot of things, but the issues are wider than an IT system because the JPA is a whole new way of working. Problems may have been down to something that we haven’t got right, or something that the services have done, but once we know about the problems, we can look at how we can do things better in the future.
Last year’s Service Personnel Command Paper was big news for the armed forces. What role will the SPVA have in ensuring it is implemented?
There are a number of Government and MoD initiatives that are aimed at ‘joining up’ the way our services are managed, and the Command Paper is a great place to start that. It gives all of us who are involved in the support of our armed forces the opportunity to work better together. One thing we will be working on is the pay and pensions system, so we can start to gather information about personnel when they are first recruited so that when they become veterans, we already have all the details we need to help them.
Plans for a veterans’ ID card scheme have been announced. How is the SPVA going to be involved?
The honest answer is I don’t know yet. The scheme is still in the planning stages, but I’m sure we will have a role. Legion will be among the first to know when an announcement is made.
How else are you expanding the SPVA’s services?
The Veterans Minister has kicked off a new initiative called the Welfare Pathway, which will look at how all of us who work with veterans can work better together. It should mean there is no duplication or overlap and that veterans are always directed to the people who have the right kind of skills and knowledge to handle the various queries and issues they have. It’s really promising, because if we get that right we will greatly improve our level of knowledge about what is important to veterans. The SPVA is not going to be the best place – and never should be – to advise on topics such as housing, because that’s not our job. But, on the other hand, we know plenty of people that do. We also know what the Legion and the other charities offer, so we’re in a position to point people in the right direction. Likewise, the Legion can point people to us. But I think we need to do something to make this formal, so that we can get the best out of everybody and use our resources in the best way.
The Veterans Minister has said he wants to raise awareness about the SPVA’s services. How are you working to achieve this?
We had a stand at the Armed Forces Day event in Chatham, and handing out Veterans Badges also helps raise our profile, as events like that allow us to meet veterans face to face. What I really want is for people to understand that the SPVA has a vital role to play in supporting veterans and also in supporting the armed forces, but if we are doing our job correctly, we should already be largely on the radar.
How would you describe your relationship with the Legion and other ex-service charities?
I make a point of attending as many formal occasions as I can, such as pensioners’ lunches, and COBSEO (Confederation of British Service and Ex-service Organisations) meetings. COBSEO is represented on our advisory board, so they are part of the group that helps to shape our services and tells us what we are doing well and where we are going wrong. Overall, the relationships are very positive and I think we all appreciate the opportunity to talk to each other and find ways to work things out. It’s the welfare services that I am particularly interested in, and how we can work with the service charities and services sector to take them forward. The new Welfare Pathway will do a lot to help with that. It is my mission to offer the best service I can to veterans and service people, and I take that very seriously – it’s what I came here to do.
