The fun and japes were obviously an important aspect of life to balance the apprentice’s hardworking, no-nonsense existence. It says a great deal about the character of the lads involved that they were able to receive cross-words and kindness equally and unflinchingly.

What also comes across in these pages is the reward of opportunity. The apprentice’s seem to have grabbed it all with both hands and excelled at competitions in football and boxing in particular. Perhaps the strength of the lads’ unity is still on show here. All ranks are heard and clearly sing with one voice.
The book also contains a great gem from Colonel N.A.C Croft DSO, OBE, MA (Commanding Officer 1957 – 60) that could be written into every resettlement guide: “To all Apprentices I say ‘Go flat-out in all you do’ yours is the opportunity of a lifetime and yours is the age to learn.”

The scheme will be one of Canterbury College’s first contributions to the recently signed covenant that aims to foster closer relationships between soldiers, their families and the communities in which they live and work.

The idea was first discussed when Lieutenant Colonel Paul Meldon, Commanding Officer of the Personnel Recovery Unit, gave a presentation to College staff in February.

Lt Col Meldon spoke about his unit’s work resettling soldiers in Kent, and discussed the possibility of Canterbury College’s inclusion in its soldier rehabilitation programme. He explained that including Canterbury College’s courses into the Army’s rehabilitation programme would benefit ex-Service personnel by broadening the support systems available to them.

The talk was followed by a discussion that also included members of the Canterbury based 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, Unit Careers and Welfare representatives and the Commander of Medical Services for the Kent region.

Canterbury College hopes to begin providing courses for rehabilitating Army personnel in the near future.

The College made history in January this year by becoming the first further education college in the UK to sign an Armed Forces Community Covenant with the commanding officers of the Army regiments based in Canterbury.

Eos Risk Management, is a finalist for the International Trade Award in the Sentinel Business Awards and the Queens Awards, which recognise achievements in international trade.

The double nominations are a boost for the company, which is already acknowledged as one of the top 10 global maritime security, consultancy and training firms. Eos is being recognised for its hard work and efforts both overseas and locally and the awards signify the company’s strength and growth.

Director David Johnson, who presented at a UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) meeting last week, said: “We are delighted to be finalists.

“The International Trade Award celebrates the fact that of Eos’s combined annual turnover, over three quarters of our business is overseas. We are proud of our achievements and our international work but also remain committed to the local community. In addition to the awards, it’s an exciting year for us with brand new training facilities being established, new courses planned and gaining increased market share.”

He said Eos was also going for several quality standards and process accreditations this year to run alongside its phenomenal growth.

The Sentinel Business Awards are sponsored by UKTI and the European Regional Development Fund. Winners will be announced on 27 March at Kings Hall in Stoke on Trent.

Winners for the Queens Awards for Enterprise, highly prestigious awards for outstanding achievement by UK businesses in the categories of Innovation, International Trade and Sustainable Development, will be announced on 21 April.

Eos is securing new contracts overseas on a weekly basis and also train more than 800 candidates each year. Founded six years ago to help ex-Military personnel make the transition into the security industry, the company diversified into supplying the services of fully-trained operatives as well.

Their new Vessel Protect Officer course, unique to industry and recently approved by the MoD, is set to see training take-up increase further and overall and they are predicting a 50% increase in business this year.

www.eosrisk.com

In all honesty, I don’t. It’s a case of ‘it happened’: it’s like a lot of things. It’s not what happens it’s what you do about it that counts. If you dwell on the past and if you dwell in the worst part of your life then that’s all you ever do: go back to the worst part of your life. That’s how depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder takes hold.

There’s an awful lot of accepting that things happen. The Americans sum it up in a simple little adage: ‘shit happens’. It’s blunt; it seems coarse but it encapsulates it all. It’s the way you’ve got to look at it. If something bad happens, it happens; don’t dwell on it forever, and that’s the way I look at it really. It was a terrible, terrible moment of my life but I don’t dwell on it. I don’t spend my whole time thinking ‘oh my goodness, why did this happen to me’? Why shouldn’t it happen to me? What makes me so special that it shouldn’t happen? There are accidents and incidents in life. You’re born with what you’re born with. For instance, you know that I was born with the God-given grace of being Welsh. It could have been so much worse: I could have been born English!

I’ve had to live with that Simon, sometimes it isn’t easy…
I love that sort of banter that we have. That sort of thing just helps you to trivialise what happened. Even though it’s not trivial and lots of other people have disabilities, whether it be congenital or an accident or whether it be by someone else’s design: It happens.

If I’d said that when you’d just received your injuries, I could have expected a slap right? What if I’d said, ‘bad luck mate, shit happens…’
People did. Of course they did. With Military people, they care; trust me. Military people care about their friends and their comrades more than you could ever possibly believe but they don’t know how to show emotions. They don’t stand there and cry for you. They just get up and give you two barrels of humour. It’s blunt and it’s dark but it’s their way of dealing with their sense of loss because there’s a huge amount of tragedy for those that aren’t injured as well. For those guys who feel guilty about surviving and feel a certain amount of remorse because they’ve lost their friends, they’ve lost their comrades and colleagues whether you get on with them or not. They still feel it. It’s all down to that. There’s no room within them at that point in time for huge dollops of sympathy or self-pitying. That happens in the quiet moments when you’re on your own when you’re away from everybody. Those guys have their own suffering to get through. That’s how we end up with so many people taking their own lives or in depression or getting into drink or drug fuelled crime and either ending up homeless or in prison.

I understand that you’ve met the man responsible for the air assault on the Sir Gallahad.
I wanted to meet him. Because when something horrible happens to you (people have been in car crashes or incidents where someone gets punched or someone gets hit with a bottle), you rarely get to actually meet the person that does these things. What you end up there is that when you try to go to sleep at night you go back, or you drift back to that moment or you wake up in the early hours and you start ruminating and cogitating through your mind and you end up with that person for whatever reason, in your mind. You just wonder, do they have life in their veins, are they a sociopath, are they a psychopath are they a complete nutcase that’s just going around causing mayhem and damage to other people?

When you have that in your mind you just wonder about it all the time. I wondered whether this guy was a demon, or a real human being. When I did meet him, he was just one of the most pleasant people you could ever hope to meet. He was doing his job but yes I ran the gambit of emotions when I met him at first. I didn’t know whether I was going to cry, whether I was going to shake his hand or whether I was going to kick him to death. I didn’t know any of these things until I met him. And then when I met him and I met his wife Graciella, Carlos was just such a nice guy.

Oddly, I hadn’t thought of him as human until I heard his name. Perhaps there’s another American expression we can use here: ‘closure’?
No. ‘Closure’ is something that’s very final and until people stop taking their lives over what happened in the Falklands I don’t know if we can ever have closure. As long as there are people with issues and problems that are caused by their service in the Falklands, there can’t be closure. Closure for me?: There’s no need for closure for me. I’ve done all the grieving I needed to do. Ultimately, people go to war and people die.

I learned something about doctors. Doctors have two rules they must understand about war. The first rule is that young people die. The second rule: there’s nothing you can do about rule number one. Even as a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or even as a Special Forces operative you need to learn that and have that understanding. Yes, you miss them and you care about them but you move on.  You have to move on. Some of those Special Forces guys can grieve for somebody who died 10 years ago and for no apparent reason burst into uncontrollable weeping fits. These things just happen. It’s because we’re human.

There must have been fearful repercussions from what you’ve seen and what you’ve been through. What’s the key difference between psychological pain and physical pain? How do you treat each? You can’t rub an ointment on your soul.
(Laughing) You can try lubricating it from the inside, that’s for sure. Huge amounts of us have tried that and have failed miserably. I don’t drink anymore. I probably will go back to it (socially) I’m sure. I’ve given up drinking for a while, purely and simply because I wasn’t enjoying it. It wasn’t doing me any good, I was just putting weight on and I just really felt that I wasn’t enjoying it, you know. The one joy of that is that it tells me that I’m not an alcoholic and that I don’t have an addictive personality. I can just pick it up or choose to leave it. The opportunities to drink are fast and furious for me.

The difference between physical pain and mental pain is that physical pain, to a degree, will come to an end. You can have strains and stresses and bad backs and sore necks and things like that, that are with you forever. On the whole the immediacy of pain that you suffer in its initial assault largely goes away and you’re able to control or manage it and get on with your life. There are more severe sources of pain though, and I understand when people say that that’s not true and say ‘I’ve had a bad back for 30 years’: I understand that but on the whole, from injuries received in conflict, physical pain generally eases.

With mental pain it can increase. Not outlandishly but day-by-day, year-by-year: depression, post traumatic stress, family anguish, all of those things can ramp up and as you know and they lead to some very, very unfortunate situations. You can get into drugs or drink, crime, end up in court and end up in jail. Then when you come out you’ve no family to come out to. There’s all manner of different things with mental illness. That’s why I believe so strongly that mental health is one of the most important things we must get right in this country, because if we don’t get mental health sorted we have the greatest debilitating disease to deal with. It is the greatest disability in the country, in the world even.

Why do so many ex-Forces personnel end up in a downward spiral?
There are lots of things. There isn’t just one thing because we’re all different; we’re all individuals. Different things hurt people differently. There are triggers that fire off PTSD for one person that wouldn’t trigger it for another. So you know PTSD is one thing that we’ve seen as a huge, huge problem. Things get out of control. They’re out of your (the Serviceperson’s) control. You look at any situation. It’s when things are beyond your control and when you’ve been trained to be in control, and this can affect civilian life where you have all the plans and all the aptitude but nobody gives you the opportunity. Because you never get the opportunity or you never quite sell yourself correctly or you just don’t have what is required at that point in time you’re out of control and you don’t have control of your life. Then you do what you do when you’ve got quiet time in the Military, which is going for a few bevvies with your friends. That can spiral right out of control.

Service-people are just people that are used to being on the go and are used to doing things. Service personnel are used to working five, six, seven, eight days a week continually, doing something different. It’s nothing to do a full morning’s work and then for someone just to say right; just unpacked your kit and you’re off to somewhere else for two days. You fly out, you fly back and you crack on with something else, you’re not given any time off for being away. You just get on with it and to come to Civvy Street where you know you may get a bit of part time work or you may just have full time work in a factory five days a week and you’re trying to resettle all the time… It doesn’t equate for a lot of Service-leavers. That’s why you find Service Personnel make good firemen, good ambulance workers and good nurses. They make good police officers; they make good truck drivers and train operatives. The reason being is that every day is different. Even though there’s a repetitive side to your job. When you’re in the Military there is always something new, there is always a new danger and there is always the element of surprise and those things are what they buy into. They enjoy belonging to a large but stable organisation that has the potential to blow up in their face in many ways. That’s why they thrive in those environments. That’s why they go off and become mine clearance experts. They go off and work in disaster areas, it’s because it’s in their nature. When all that goes you feel bereft and it’s a grieving process. You need a new sense of purpose and I think that gets lost somewhere.

What do we need to do to make things better for returning Personnel?
The first thing we need to do is to start resettling people earlier. If people are going to be leaving within two or three years, we need to start resettling people two or three years before they actually leave. We need to actually start preparing people for Civvy Street – getting them trained, getting them organised or giving them the opportunity to organise themselves more the point. When they arrive on Civvy Street they have to organise themselves. Nobody’s going to do it for them and it’s a very harsh world. It’s much harsher than being in the Military because, you know, despite having seen the whole battle and horrors of conflict, terrifying as they are you, when you arrive back on Civvy Street there’s nobody going to come and pick up the slack for you.

So when you get home its good if you’re as prepared as possible. The resettlement courses are much, much better than they used to be. I believe the best way to prepare anybody for Civvy Street is that if you’ve got a three year contract from the moment you join, the second you join you should specialise as Service People doing jobs but we also need to concentrate on what we are going to do with that person once he finishes. It’s not just good enough to say they’re going to join a different job because they’ve been living the lifestyle of a vocational environment, they need to have something for when they leave: something that makes them a viable proposition and valuable to somebody else, because they are valuable and they’re used to being valued. We need to find a different way to get these guys through transition especially if they’ve been in the Military for a long time. You can become quite institutionalised in the Military as well.

Many people are inspired by what you’ve managed to achieve over the past 30 years. What inspires you?
What inspires me..? My goodness: What inspires me? There are so many things that inspire me.

Let me guess: Shane Williams, Sam Warburton, Gareth Edwards…
They don’t inspire me; they just fill me with joy! They’re incredibly talented people but with the greatest will in the world you can work as hard as you like but you cannot train talent. Talent is forever. Those guys have got it and they’ve got a work ethic that I love.

I’m inspired by people who do things. I’ve got a daughter who went to boarding school. It was her choice but she struggled for the first term and she overcame that and she overcame all the problems she had about leaving home and the things that she encountered. She overcame all of that and now she’s the happiest girl in the world. She loves what she’s doing, she loves school and she loves coming home. I can’t think of somebody more inspiring then somebody who’s overcome all of those natural inhibitions and come out of their shell as such a strong leader.

I’m inspired by people that do things that make a difference. I pull out Tanni Grey-Thomson. There are people from ordinary walks of life out there that inspire me. There are all these adventurers. People get so wrapped up in Bear Grylls. Bear Grylls is an exciting character. What amuses me is that he climbs up a rock face and there’s a camera waiting for him when he gets there. Let me think about this… He’s only doing what he’s been trained to do. SAS guys and SBS guys and Special Forces the world over do these things day-in-day-out. He’s just a television star now and good luck to him.

I’m inspired by real people in the day-to-day who make a real difference in real people’s lives. People like Mother Theresa. She made a real difference. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for his beliefs. The man was a freedom fighter, and he sacrificed most of his life in jail for his beliefs.  He altered the course of life for so many people across the world. How inspirational is that?! But there are so many people we don’t even know about and we never get to hear about because we see our papers filled with celebrity, tabloid gossip. I stopped buying newspapers a long time ago because of it. I don’t want to know who’s had an affair with him or her. I’m not interested. I like people that do something special and that are truly inspirational characters who have no fear and you meet them on a daily basis and they do incredible things. If you’re ever going to be inspired by people, be inspired by those people who take part in their own communities. Ultimately they are our communities. We’ve got to take responsibility for ourselves. It’s all about self-belief and self worth. If you value yourself, then you’re OK.

FRS Managing Director, Graham Brown, said “We are delighted to reach this milestone  -especially as many recruitment consultancies have struggled in the recent economic climate”. Brown went on to say “it is the perfect way to round off  our 10^th anniversary celebrations – which will also see the opening of further new offices and a new website too meet the needs of both clients and candidates as the most recent round of Military job-shedding starts to impact “.

The Cambridgeshire based Forces Recruitment Services network has bucked the trend – opening 10 new offices during  2011 to build a network of 24 U.K. wide locations with a further eight planned for 2012.

The 1,000th placement was made by Central London Regional Director, Jeff Prince, who sourced Neil Viveash, an Ex-Royal Engineers Staff Sergeant into a role as Group Facilities Manager for a Serviced Office Group client.

Starting his new career Neil  thanked Jeff, and all at Forces Recruitment Services, commenting that   ”the professionalism and understanding extended to me made me feel that he truly understood not only the job but also my needs – and worries – as an ex-Serviceman”  -  testament to the dedication of Forces Recruitment Services commitment as THE Recruiter of choice for ex forces personnel.

The placement came as part of a recruitment drive instigated to help and support ex-Servicemen and women through the MoD’s current redundancy phase – 4,200 job cuts in a second round of Armed Forces redundancies as part of the strategic defence and security review.

Forces Recruitment Services’ Director of Finance & Corporate Affairs, Alan Cawthorne, added: ” The long term commitment and investment of both ourselves and our network of franchised regional directors not only bucks the doom and gloom post- banking crisis trend for our own businesses but also demonstrates that commercial employers are increasingly waking up to the pool of transferrable ex-Military talent we have on tap”.

teams from some of the country’s leading employers are set to battle it out to become the ‘apprentice team of year’ in a new two-month challenge launched at Dorney Lake yesterday.

The Brathay Apprentice Challenge will pit eight teams of apprentices against each other in a range of challenges designed to test young people’s business acumen, team work and even physical endurance.

The teams, which include apprentices from Bentley, the Co-operative, Virgin Media, the National Apprenticeship Service, defence manufacturers MBDA and aerospace firm Cobham, will be joined by a team made up of apprentices who are also GB Junior Rowing Team potentials – supported by Junior World Champion Finalist Jack Beaumont, who gave a speech at the launch.

Following two months of challenges designed to test the teams’ abilities to work together, fundraise for a variety of charities and spread the word about what apprentices can achieve, the Challenge will come to a head with a full day contest at Brathay’s Cumbrian training HQ.  Here, the challenges will push the teams’ problem solving skills and physical endurance to the limit as they end the day with a 10-mile whaler boat race across Lake Windermere.

Rower Jack Beaumont said:

“I am proud to be supporting the Brathay Apprentice Challenge. Many athletes who are representing our country, at the highest level, have completed SkillsActive’s Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence and so we know first hand the positive impact Apprenticeships have not just on those who take them, but on wider society.”

Jaine Bolton, Director of the National Apprenticeship Service, welcomed the launch of the challenge.

“In this new era of higher quality Apprenticeships, that are helping the nation’s businesses grow, more needs to be done to recognise the incredible talent and success of the nation’s apprentices.”

There were 457,200 Apprenticeship starts in 2010/11, an increase of 63.5 per cent compared to 2009/10.  There were increases at all ages and all levels

In this video, Junior World Championship Finalist Rower, Jack Beaumont, launches the challenge from Dorney Lake, meeting members of the teams who will be taking part in the challenge.

For further information, visitwww.apprenticeships.org.uk.

Jo Pickard, BFRS Events Manager, comments: “The event gives Service leavers a head-start in making the transition back to civilian life. BFRS aims to help those connected to the Forces understand their options, identify their skills and make themselves as attractive as possible for their next steps into civilian life.”

With National Grid as the event’s corporate sponsor the event is being supported by Hambleton and Richmondshire District Council. Local MP, Julian Smith has confirmed his attendance, and with the Northern Echo and BFBS Radio as media partners, it is anticipated that the event will be the most successful to date. Exhibitors include Civvy Street (Royal British Legion); Automatic Weapons Establishment, Makro, the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust and Pitman Training Group.

Additionally, the event includes free workshops on thinking of starting your own business, and what employers are looking for. There is also practical CV writing support. There will be training providers, recruitment firms, franchise opportunities, service providers and specialist advisers available at the event.

BFRS founder Harry Dean says: “Ex-Forces personnel possess a unique combination of highly developed skills and qualities. They go on to develop successful second careers, proving in the process to be tremendous assets to the organisations they join. However, the actual transition process from military to civilian life can be daunting. We are totally committed to ensuring that this transition process is effective, which is why we are investing in reaching Service leavers in a number of ways”.

Full details of the event and workshops are available at www.bfrsevents.co.uk

Bill Shaw’s account of his wrongful arrest is a record of his survival in three of  Afghanistan’s most notorious prisons whilst awaiting trial. What is incredible is that Shaw never even had the certainty of light at the end of the tunnel. Seemingly, never given a straight answer Shaw had little or no idea when his court case would be heard and whether it would be dealt with to anywhere near the professional standards of the British justice system.

Although Shaw had a distinguished career in the Royal Military Police (RHP) capped with an MBE, as a member of G4S he was at the mercy of the British Embassy and worse still, the prison commandant. Shaw’s story isn’t so much a tale of struggle against  authority but more against what it’s like to be permanently fluctuating between fear and
confusion. The background however, is flavoured with the diabolical and inhuman conditions under which prisoners are held in Afghanistan (many of whom without proper legal representation).

Digging deep
There’s no question that Shaw had to dig deep every single day to get through his horrific ordeal. Reflecting on his tough childhood in Salford and looking back warmly on his Military career had clearly taught him many lessons about strength and standards and about how to deal with a life led outside of the comfort zone.

Fortunately, karma wasn’t completely lacking and hundreds of people came forward from Shaw’s past to offer their support and more names to the petitioning process aimed at getting help from Downing Street. He’s also lucky to have such a close knit and plucky family that never gave up hope and never let their heads drop. Perhaps, without them and
the letters that trickled into his vermin infested cell he might have eventually lost nerve and heart.

Bill Shaw shows the kind of resilience that all of us would like to believe we would have if we ever needed it. Incarceration was not something that Shaw wanted to buy himself out of with a bribe. Knowing his innocence and proving it were two different things of course, but Shaw continued to push for a full acquittal. Sometimes pride is a strength and not a flaw. In Bill Shaw’s case it was the difference between keeping his head above water and going under.

‘Kill Switch’ is one of the best memoirs I’ve read in years. It’s a great mixture of gut  wrenching hopelessness and real courage.
TJ

The Fair, to be held at Surrey Sports Park, in Guildford, Surrey, will be held on Thursday 8 March 2012, marking the start of SkillsActive’s Change Gear programme.

The Change Gear Programme is designed to offer specific career change support to ensure those leaving the Services are empowered to make informed decisions about the opportunities available to them in the sport, health and fitness, outdoors, play work, health and beauty, and caravans industries.

Head of Programmes, Julie Evans explains: “What we are hoping to achieve with Change Gear Employment and Training Fair is to look past the uniform to the person within, recognising not only the skills of trained Service men and women, but also the personal qualities that will help each individual succeed. Our sector has massive potential for growth and career development and therefore offers a wealth of opportunity for those entering it”.

The event provides a unique opportunity for companies to come along and meet potential employees, and raise their profile as a respected employer to the industry. SkillsActive is urging companies to sign up, thereby helping former Armed Forces Personnel to carve a new, rewarding and successful career.

Service Personnel will have access to specific career change advice as well as the chance to meet with training providers, employers and Veterans who have made the transition from Forces-life into the sector. This will enable them to make informed decisions about their future.

As well as the Employment and Training Fair the Change Gear programme includes:
Explore Sport: Specialised workshop designed to help those new to the sector to understand themselves, their skills and the options available so they can make the right career choice. Continued support will be given after the workshop via email and online networks etc.

SkillsActive will also be holding events where people at all stages of their transition can meet sector experts, employers and training providers to understand more about their choices, skills requirements and how they can maximise the opportunities in Sport & Active leisure.

Train to Change: Technical training to deliver the right qualifications and skills support that career changers need to get the best jobs. SkillsActive has a national network of over 80 quality assured training providers to make sure they get the best training and the best value for money, to succeed.

Meet the Employer: Direct access to quality employers and business opportunities through sector-specific events and our online job matching service means job searching is supported rather than stressful.

If you would like to know more about Change Gear or sign-up for the Employment and Training Fair please go to www.skillsactive.com/changegear

The idea is simple. Take a trusted brand that everyone knows and replicate it ‘cookie cutter’ style. Every burger, every sandwich and every cup of coffee tastes exactly the same anywhere you purchase it in the UK or for the really big brands, around the world.

Rather than go through the blood sweat toil and tears of setting up your own business (or brand) from scratch, franchising enables a new business to hit the ground running with everything that the brand has in spades to hand: appeal, standards and reputation.

Building a business
It’s because of this reason that franchisors (the people that own the business) don’t just let anyone into the fold. It wasn’t always the case that McDonald’s ruled the fast food world. That clown had to build his business brick by brick, Big Mac by Big Mac and although he doesn’t want to have a specifically hands on role any more, he certainly wants to protect the brand.

Franchisors are looking for people with certain attributes and qualities. First among these is a desire to make the franchise succeed. This takes hard work and so franchisors are looking for a track record demonstrating a solid and dependable individual. Specific experience in the trade is useful but it’s not the whole shooting match. Training can overcome a lack of any experience but you can’t train a person to be motivated or conscientious.

Of course the franchisor will also benefit from the initial financial outlay that the new franchisee hands over but it isn’t where the real money is earned. The initial sum will kit-out new premises and get the business on its feet. After that the franchisor/franchisee relationship is more of a partnership than you might think. The franchisor will give the franchisee the benefit of their advice and tips on how to make the business succeed.

Training for success
Part of this will be pre-opening training. Clearly, many Ex-Service Personnel are going to be inexperienced where the nuts and bolts of running a business are concerned. The franchisor may well take the opportunity before the franchise opens to make sure that they are up to speed with how employment law works or what the latest health and safety requirements are. Again, the benefit is repaid in the success of the business and it also avoids the worse case ‘barista at major brand coffee shop injured by rogue milk jug’ headlines. From then on the franchisor will keep in touch with the franchisee to make sure that they have all the resources they need. This is all in their favour since they’ll be taking a profit share, not to mention more visibility and market share for the brand.

The major benefit is simple. Whilst setting up a new business on your own is an option and your redundancy package will give you the capital to go it alone, a look at the facts might make you think differently. The reality is that only 20% of business start-ups in the UK are still operating two years after they open, whereas 80% of franchises are still profitable after the same amount of time.

All of this suggests that franchising could be a brilliant option for the long term. Starting small and with support allows the franchisee to grow with the business until such time that they feel confident enough to discuss new ideas with the franchisor or expand their interests to incorporate more ambitious goals. Franchisors are not dictatorial and will certainly appreciate the fact that nobody has the monopoly on good ideas. The regular reporting process that the franchisee goes through is an excellent exercise in discipline as well as a good opportunity to show your worth and air your views.

Your experience counts
Ex-Service Personnel might at this moment be thinking that franchising has nothing to do with what they’ve been doing for the last twenty years. A closer look suggests that this isn’t the case; Services Personnel bring a wealth of experience in following procedures, decision making, communication and getting the job done under trying circumstances. Go on any management training course and these are the cornerstones that it’ll be based on. The point is that you’ve already accrued many of the key skills through your Forces experience and with a bit of tweaking you could be a very effective operator.

Service Personnel are also renowned as being trustworthy and responsible as well as having integrity and a pride in what they’re doing. Add to that the fact that ex-Services Personnel are traditionally financially stable and on leaving the Forces have a ready redundancy fund to invest its little wonder that franchisors look favourably from applications from this group of people.

Choice isn’t a problem either; whether you fancy becoming a restaurateur, an estate agent or mini mart manager with 800 companies in the UK open to franchise agreements you’re bound to find the right business in the correct sector for you. The key to making the right choice is to reflect on your interests and transferable skills.

Read before you sign
Simple advice includes getting a copy of a job description before you start. Take a careful look and make sure that you’re happy with it and feel confident about fulfilling the requirements. Although it isn’t the exactly the same as a job description for an ordinary job it should give you a good idea of what’s involved.

Once you’ve made a decision, a great starting point is to look up the listings of the British Franchise Association (BFA). There are currently 400 members that you can be sure meet the standards set out by the association in terms of the support that they give to potential franchisees. In other words it’s a safe bet within a safe bet.

Franchising provides a sheltered route into business. The initial investment and hard graft will pay dividends assuming you follow the advice of the franchisor that will doubtless back you all the way.

Boxout 1
Franchising Organisations:
British Franchise Association
The British Franchise Association (bfa) is the voluntary self regulating governing body for franchising. The UK market encompasses many franchise opportunities and the association will help you to make a more informed choice about which one best suits you. All members have chosen to be vetted against a strict code of business practice – they endeavour to be good franchisors that can deliver the success that you want.
Tel: 01235 820470
Web: www.thebfa.org

The Franchise Development Centre
Whether developing a new franchise business or enhancing your existing franchise system you deserve to give yourself the best chance of success. Our franchise consultants are experienced, professional and have integrity. They are by your side, enjoy taking personal responsibility for projects and will make it happen. Don’t take a chance with your future – let us help you achieve your business and personal goals.
Tel: 01904 561598
Web: www.thefranchisedevelopmentcentre.co.uk

Which Franchise.com
A directory of franchisors looking for potential franchisees in all sectors, as well as a source of information for people looking into different franchising possibilities.
Web: www.whichfranchise.com

Franchise Direct
Franchise Direct UK is a dedicated resource with a wide list of businesses for sale and franchise opportunities for sale. View an impressive article index relating to franchising, franchisee success stories and more.
Web: www.franchisedirect.co.uk
The UK Franchise Directory
A detailed index of franchise opportunities with further information covering all sectors and all franchise types.
Web: www.theukfranchisedirectory.net