Government offers mortgage talks and pupil premium to military families
Wednesday 8 December 2010 8:33 AM
David Cameron says the new deal is intended to counterbalance 'inevitable disruption' caused by a career in the armed forces.
A new deal for military families – setting up talks with the banks to improve mortgage lending to members of the armed forces and a £10m "pupil premium" to be paid to their children's schools to fund additional pastoral care – will be announced by the government today.
David Cameron, speaking in Afghanistan where he met President Hamid Karzai and General David Petraeus, the American commander of international forces, said he wanted to ensure the "inevitable disruption" of military life did not cause greater problems for personnel and their families.
The government will today publish an armed forces bill, requiring ministers to update parliament every year on progress of the military covenant to strengthen the nation's deal with the forces and their families.
The Ministry of Defence will also publish a report on the military covenant, commissioned by the coalition from Hew Strachan, professor of war history at Oxford University, which will highlight the growing problems facing military families in securing bank lending to buy a home. "A growing percentage of service personnel can experience difficulty in obtaining mortgages because they have a poor credit history," it will say.
The Treasury will chair talks between banks, representatives of the armed forces and the housing minister, Grant Shapps. Service families' credit ratings are often downgraded on account of the fact that they have to move around regularly.
"The prime minister believes there is a real problem facing service families, through no fault of their own, and we want banks to get to the bottom of it," the prime minister's official spokesman said.
Schools will be awarded extra funds for every child they accept from a military home under the pupil premium scheme, which is being introduced in April. The scheme will reward schools for taking children from the poorest homes.
Children of forces families on average achieve better results than other pupils, but the government wants to give schools extra money to help with the pastoral care of children whose parents may be in combat and who regularly change schools as their parents are posted to different locations. It will amount to a few hundred pounds for each child each year – adding up to as much as £10.8m for the 36,000 pupils affected.
Cameron said: "Our service personnel make an extraordinary contribution to British life. Those serving on the front line risk their lives for us on a daily basis. So all of us – the government, the private sector and voluntary organisations – need to go the extra mile for them. I want to … make sure that the inevitable disruption associated with military life does not lead to greater problems. It is important that service personnel are able to get their foot on the housing ladder the same way as other people do … and that their children are given the support they need at school."
Also See