Dear Member,

Who would have thought a few weeks ago that the world would be in such crisis, and it is certainly going to leave a lasting mark everywhere?

Obviously, I am going to have a section on the Coronavirus later in this newsletter, but for the time being I am just going to ask you all to stay safe.

 In your newsletter this month we feature: 

1. Membership
   • Renewal Information
2. RBL 100^th Birthday Celebrations
3. County Event Calendar
4. Poppy Appeal
   • Calendar of Events
5. Strategic Review – Latest update – Una Cleminson, National Chairman, Board of Trustees
6. Almonisation
7. Coronavirus – Covid-19
8. Around the Branches

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Membership

Renewal Information

Membership Renewal now takes place throughout the year with most of our members renewing on 1^st October each year, however members who have joined since 2015 may have a renewal date dictated by the date that they physically joined the Legion.

 The renewal process is no longer controlled by Branches, but centrally.

Renewal instructions will be sent to you a month or so before your membership is due, this gives you plenty of time to renew before your membership expires; any communications, information, updates etc. that you receive after your expiry date is totally goodwill and may be stopped at any time and after a period, if your membership is not renewed, it will be lapsed (this may be controlled centrally or by the Branch).

 Please do not destroy any paperwork that you receive regarding your renewal as you may need it to effect this.

 If you are unsure of how you can renew, or you have lost your paperwork, please contact the Legion Contact Centre on 0808 802 8080, They will be able to give you all the information you may need and, if required, will renew your membership there and then (by debit or credit card or they can set up direct debits).

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RBL 100^th Birthday Celebrations

Date for your Diary - On 15^th May 2021, The County will be holding a 100^th Birthday Celebration of The Royal British Legion event in St Mary’s Garden’s which is along Bedford Riverside. All Branches will be expected to attend on the day as we would like to bring the County together and show that we are One County, One Legion. We know that many Branches will probably want to hold their own event on the day, but we are politely requesting that you put those events off until Sunday 16^th May instead.

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County Event Calendar - 2020

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Poppy Appeal

The latest Poppy Appeal news and information will be presented here.

 Calendar of Events

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Strategic Review – Latest message from Una Cleminson, National Chairman, Board of Trustees

Dear member,

 I am delighted to share with you our new One Legion strategy and an update on reviewing how we work. We have previously shared information about the strategic review, which is a significant piece of work. We started off with looking at our charitable remit – Remembrance, Campaigning and Welfare. We needed to ask ourselves ‘how can we make the greatest difference to the lives of those most in need?’, we must be confident that our work can meet the changing needs of the Armed Forces community and their families. This led to the decisions to close our Break Centres and Handy Van Service, and to enhance our Remembrance and Campaigning work.

The next step in the review was to produce a long-term strategy for the Legion, to inform all our work and decision making, and find ways to improve how we work.

 Our new One Legion strategy 

1. What we want to achieve – our vision

We needed to find a way to explain our unique role as many people don’t really know all that we do – many just see the poppy – with little or no understanding of the breadth of our work.  We do so much because over time, we have picked up activities in response to a variety of situations, rather than having a clear direction to provide consistency in our work and service for beneficiaries. We need to be clear about what we want to achieve and must work together towards the same ambition.

We have previously shared with you a working vision, and I can confirm the Board of Trustees have approved this single vision we can all work towards: ‘To bring together our nations, communities and individuals to create better futures for our Armed Forces community and their families.’ 

2. Why our work matters

The second part of our strategy is reinforcing why the work we do is so important. We are remaining true to who we are through continuing Remembrance, ensuring the unique contribution of our Armed Forces community is never forgotten, delivering welfare and campaigning to enable those we serve to live fulfilled lives, and working with our people and wider network who want to make a difference and see their positive contribution. Please view the video which highlights this.

Video – The Royal British Legion’s Vision

3. How we’ll achieve our ambitions

The third and final element of the strategy, is how we’ll achieve our vision, which is through five strategic priorities that will guide our work. We will create better futures for our Armed Forces community and their families by:

 Growing and nurturing public support through awareness, education and participation.

1. Understanding and adapting to the needs of the Armed Forces community.
2. Raising income to deliver integrated, sustainable and cost-effective services.
3. Collaborating with our network of Partners, Members, Volunteers, Staff, Fundraisers and Supporters.
4. Living our values to attract and develop great people.
   
   Changing how we work
   
   We’ve spoken before about the need to adapt to the evolving needs of our community and as they change, so must we. What we do today is often what we’ve done before, and this can lead to us not being as joined up as we could be in how we work. During our strategic review, we identified improvements we need to make to how we work in these areas:

• ‘Customer’ – we use this as one word to include our beneficiaries, members, volunteers, staff, partners, supporters and fundraisers. We need to ensure all our customers have a great experience no matter how or where they come to us.
• Insight and Data – we need to use more insight and data to inform our decisions.
• Strategy – our next steps will be setting specific objectives for what we want to achieve so that we can deliver the strategy. We will also find ways to measure how well we are delivering our work in creating better futures for our Armed Forces community and their families.
• Products and Services – we will produce processes for 1) establishing new products and services and 2) for improving current products and services so we continually adapt to the needs of those we serve.
• Members – you are a vital part of who we are and what we do. We want to look at how we can improve supporting members in undertaking your important work in helping the people we serve.
• Engagement – we need to be more consistent and joined up in how we communicate and engage with our many audiences, both in terms of content and channels we use.

 Change will not happen overnight, but we will progress steadily to develop our work. We will keep communicating with you about our progress, whether through email, Legion magazine and face-to-face events, such as the Annual Conference and Membership Meet-ups in the summer.

Next year, we celebrate one of the most significant and exciting milestones in the Legion’s history – our centenary – and I very much look forward to us working together on delivering our new strategy to ensure the Legion is fit for the next 100 years.

 With very best wishes,

Una Cleminson

National Chairman, Board of Trustees

There is a set of Questions and Answers available, but it is too big to post in this newsletter, should you wish to see these please contact myself as shown at the bottom of this newsletter or our MSO.

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Almonisation

Each month the County Committee are notified of welfare cases within our area and are asked to contribute towards the cost of these, below are the cases that have been notified this month and I invite you to contact your Branch Committee and suggest to them that they might wish to make a contribution towards the cost of any that are within your Branch area, this is a good use of your Branch funds.

If your Branch would like to contribute to an individual case in your town, you can and the easiest way to do it is to write a cheque out to The Royal British Legion and put the reference number on the back of the cheque. It is entirely up to you how much you contribute. No amount is too little, any contribution would be gratefully accepted.

Send the cheque with a covering letter from the branch to:

Edward Robinson

Central Grants Team

The Royal British Legion

199 Borough High Street

London SE1 1AA

If you want a receipt for the cheque, you must ask for this to be supplied when you send the cheque off as County cannot supply this for you.

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There cannot be a single member who is not aware of the above global crisis, it is on the news many times a day and there is a plethora of information on the internet, however, please take note of the following information: 

• Annual Conference
  In line with all other Legion events this year’s Conference has been cancelled
• Branch Community Support (Welfare)
  In order to safeguard our members and the BCS Representatives and Volunteers, there will be no face to face BCS visits during this crisis. Support will still be available via telephone, email or online messaging services. Remember a two- minute phone call to an elderly or vulnerable member can make all the difference to them, especially if they are self-isolating.
• Standard Bearers
  It is well understood that Standard Bearers have a very loyal sense of duty, but they should be very mindful of attending funerals during this crisis as whilst they are not mass gatherings, they are still gatherings and physical health and wellbeing are paramount.
  For the foreseeable future all County Standard Bearer training is cancelled.
• Events
  These are, or will be, cancelled until the crisis is over.
• NHS Advice
  Below you will find the symptoms of the virus and also what to do if you think that you may have it:

Stay at home if you have coronavirus symptoms

Stay at home if you have either:

• a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)

To protect others, do not go to places like a GP surgery, pharmacy or hospital. Stay at home.

Use the 111 online coronavirus service to find out what to do.

Use the 111 coronavirus service

Information:

Only call 111 if you cannot get help online. 

How long to stay at home 

• if you have symptoms of coronavirus, you'll need to stay at home for 7 days
• if you live with someone who has symptoms, you'll need to stay at home for 14 days from the day the first person in the home started having symptoms

If you live with someone who is 70 or over, has a long-term condition, is pregnant or has a weakened immune system, try to find somewhere else for them to stay for 14 days.

If you have to stay at home together, try to keep away from each other as much as possible. 

Read our advice about staying at home.

There is a lot more information available at:

 https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

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Around the Branches

 There have been no reports this month

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