UK Politics
After the Wreaths, the Wait: Injured Veterans Face 17 Months for a War Pension Decision
13,274 war pension claims are waiting and first claims took a median 361 working days last year. The MoD blames IT and staffing. Veterans pay the price.
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Should injured veterans get an automatic interim payment if their claim isn’t decided within six months?
News | By Matt, Editor
13,274. That’s how many War Pension Scheme claims the Ministry of Defence had sitting on its books on 12 October, according to a written answer from veterans minister Calvin Bailey. The typical first claim took 361 working days to decide last year. The MoD’s own statistics bulletin puts that at about 17 months.
Seventeen months for a former serviceman or woman, injured or made ill by their service, to be told yes or no. And this lands in Armistice week, after a weekend of wreaths, two-minute silences and politicians in poppies.
Key facts
- 13,274 War Pension Scheme claims were on hand at 12 October 2026, including first claims, repeat claims and widows’ claims.
- Of 8,853 claims cleared in the previous 12 months, 5,997 took more than six months. That’s two in every three.
- First War Pension claims took a median 361 working days to clear in 2025/26, about 17 calendar months. Second and later claims took 398 working days, about 18 months.
- Under the newer Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, initial mental health claims took a median 186 working days in 2025/26, up from 101 in 2021/22.
- The MoD says it has run a recruitment freeze since 1 October 2025, with only limited exceptions for medical advisers and admin roles.
Two schemes, two queues
There are two systems and it’s worth being clear which is which. The War Pension Scheme covers injuries and illnesses from service before April 2005, and there’s no time limit on claiming, so a lot of claimants are older veterans. The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme covers anything since.
Have your sayTap to commentBoth are slower than they were. For the newer scheme, the median wait on an initial mental health claim rose from 101 working days in 2021/22 to 118.5, then 208, then a peak of 210 in 2024/25, before easing to 186 last year, Bailey told Lib Dem MP Charlotte Cane in a separate answer on 2 November. Across all injury and illness claims, the official AFCS statistics put the median at 126 working days.
So the mental health figure has come down a little from its peak. It’s still nearly double what it was four years ago, and it’s veterans with mental scars who are waiting longest.
Why it’s this slow
The MoD’s answers are unusually frank. Bailey said resource levels in the compensation scheme “have generally declined, particularly in the last 12 to 18 months”, before being stabilised from mid-2025. He confirmed a recruitment freeze from 1 October 2025, so “as headcount cannot be increased”, staff are being multi-skilled and moved around. Overtime and weekend working have been brought in.
On war pensions, the department blamed a switch to a new IT system in September 2024, “system issues”, training and a surge in claims after the process went digital in November 2022. It says a taskforce is now “driving improvements” and that some extra admin and caseworker staff have been recruited. Claims from the terminally ill and the over-90s are prioritised.
Some of this goes back to the last government. Claim volumes and the digitisation date are on the Conservatives’ watch. The new IT system went live two months after Labour took office, and the recruitment freeze is entirely Labour’s.
None of this is new to the veterans themselves. In 2024 RAF veteran Ian Hewitt, who ruptured his spine in training, told BBC File on 4 the compensation process was “broken” after two tribunal battles with Veterans UK.
“A second battle with bureaucracy”
The figures were first pulled together by the Daily Express, which collected reaction from across the board. George Lankester of Help for Heroes said veterans “should not have to wait months, or even years, for a decision on compensation they are entitled to”, warning that delays create “further uncertainty and financial insecurity for veterans and their families”.
The Royal British Legion said it was “acutely aware of ongoing challenges within both compensation schemes, particularly in relation to processing claims and delays to payments”.
Shadow veterans minister Mark Francois called the delays “shoddy treatment for our veterans”. Reform UK’s defence spokesman Angus MacIntyre said it was “a disgrace that veterans who have sacrificed so much are being let down by a system that should be supporting them”.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We hugely value our service personnel and veterans and owe a debt of gratitude to all those who serve, often with great personal sacrifice. We are working at pace to get compensation to those eligible as quickly as possible, using overtime and weekend working to tackle outstanding claims, while prioritising those who are terminally ill.”
It’s the second veterans story in as many days. On Sunday we reported the Mail’s story of veterans at Stone Court facing losing their homes, and Lisa Nandy managed to tell the country on Remembrance Sunday that nobody had “had to fight a war since”.
Our view
Every politician in the country wore a poppy this weekend. Fine. But the test of whether they mean it is what happens to a claim form in an office in Lancashire on a Tuesday morning, and right now the answer is that it sits there for the best part of a year and a half.
A recruitment freeze is a choice. If ministers can find money for everything else on their list, they can find enough caseworkers and medical advisers to get these decisions out inside six months. Any veteran still waiting past that point should get an interim payment while the paperwork catches up.
Should injured veterans get an automatic interim payment if their claim isn’t decided within six months? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- UK Parliament written answer 34599, 21 October 2026: 13,274 claims on hand, 361 working days, clearances table, reasons
- Written answer 37771, 2 November 2026 (via Parallel Parliament): AFCS mental health medians 2021/22 to 2025/26, recruitment freeze
- MoD War Pension Scheme statistical bulletin, March 2026: 17 and 18 calendar months, IT transition, digitisation
- GOV.UK: AFCS statistics to 31 March 2026: 126 working days median for injury and illness claims
- Daily Express, 7 November 2026: Help for Heroes, Royal British Legion, Francois, MacIntyre and MoD quotes
- BBC News, 25 June 2024: Ian Hewitt
Main image: a Chelsea Pensioner in London. Bryan Ledgard / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. File photo; he is not a claimant in this story. Social images also use photos by Daderot (CC0), the Ministry of Defence (Open Government Licence v1.0) and Marathon via Geograph (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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- ‘No One Has Had to Fight a War Since’: Nandy Ties Remembrance Sunday to Labour’s £570m EU Deal
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