BLESMA Champions the Interests of its Members

The War Pension

BLESMA has huge experience and knowledge of the War Disablement Pension. Most Members are War Pensioners

It started at the end of the First World War. Always paid from discharge to those injured in service of their country.
The first BLESMA campaign, largely behind closed doors was in the Second World War when it was discovered that those injured at Dunkirk and Alamein were awarded War Pensions at lower rates than those injured in the First World War. A successful campaign was fought.
Improvements to the War Pension and associated allowances for support and care were sought and fought for throughout the post war years.
War Pension mobility provision evolved into the Motability scheme of today.
The War Pension will be in payment for at least another 50 years and benefits BLESMA Members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan before April 2005. The War Pension is under scrutiny by the MoD – BLESMA is therefore ‘on watch’ as a number of issues are emerging!

DRMC Headley Court has been in the prosthetic business for just a few years. BLESMA, having long suggested the possibility is delighted by the outcome.
Headley Court provides an outstanding prosthetic service and the serving injured are the envy of the amputee community.
The rest of the Country’s amputees have to rely on prosthetic provision delivered through local Primary Care Trusts. Some devote more money to their amputees than do others. Therefore it is a postcode lottery.
For all other War Pension amputees there is therefore a problem. They have to accept what local decision makers decide, yet they did not lose their limbs for this area or that, for London or Norwich or Newcastle. They lost their limbs for the whole country. They should be treated equally.
But how ironic this all is! How is it that such discrepancy in provision can exist at all in a First World Country like ours? How ironic it is that the Ministry of Defence provides better prosthetic care and provision than the Department of Health, such that it demonstrates the art of the ‘prosthetically possible’.
It is time to grip the nation’s limb sense, to get full transparency on what the provision is across the country, to once and for all lay down nationwide standards for all – in sum to put the word National back into the NHS. BLESMA and other interested parties are on this case.