Medal Bulletin - December 2022

We met with the Office for Veterans Affairs (OVA) yesterday along with other stakeholders to discuss the medal award and how it is progressing. The meeting was very productive and they are working extremely hard on your behalf.

The medal will be designed by the Honours team in conjunction with the MoD Medals team who will handle the design and production with the Royal Mint.

The medal will be produced by the Royal Mint and stakeholders will not have any input into the design or the colour of the ribbon, as there are set procedures for the issue of medals and how they allocate the ribbon colour.

The eligibility criteria is currently being written and we will have input into this process to ensure that as many people as possible are included. There obviously needs to be qualifying criteria, like any other medal award and I am sure you will appreciate this.

The application form is also being written and we will be part of a test program to ensure that the application process is easy to navigate and open to everyone, no matter what their technical skills. We will test the process and provide feedback before the application goes live.

We will need volunteers to help test the application process and will ask for volunteers when we are ready to test it.

We hope that the application form will be live in Spring 2023, with the first medals being awarded in the early 2nd half of 2023. An initial ceremony for representatives of the tests to be awarded their medals with a true representation of the people who took part in the testing program, with the Veterans leading this ceremony was discussed and the OVA is actively discussing the logistics and how to make it happen.

As you can see, a lot of hard work has already begun and we continue to work closely with the OVA on this and other matters. We will be meeting again in January 2023 and I will provide a further update after that meeting or if any news reaches us before then.

Have a great Christmas and New Year, if you need anything from us, please email or call us and we will help you as much as we can.