Armed Forces Forum

We recently had the pleasure of hosting and attending the South East Coast Armed Forces Forum which has been established to act as a liaison between Kent PCT’s and the MoD and to provide strategic overview of the military health work for Kent PCT clusters.  The forum includes many of our strategic partners, such as MoD, NHS Medway, NHS West Kent, the Strategic Health Authority and KCC.

We will be hosting the next meeting of the group in September at our state of the art and newly refurbished training centre, Capel Morris and will be exploring the possibility of organising a formal event to assist in a familiarisation programme for the members to understand one another’s organisations a little better so that we can all better support the Armed Forces Community.

This is a great opportunity to get involved in the provision of support to the service community and develop even greater links and relationships with our partners across Kent.

The Royal Engineer’s Statue

36 Royal Engineer Regiment has been associated with the County Town of Maidstone for 60 years and to mark this year’s anniversary an appeal has been lodged to raise funds for a life-size bronze statue of an engineer from the regiment, commissioned by Mary Cox. The statue has been requested by the people of Maidstone, to commemorate the hard work that the regiment has contributed in the current tours, especially within Helmand. The trust aims to raise a total of £35,000 by November, when the statue is expected to be unveiled in Brenchley Gardens, Maidstone. 

I am genuinely pleased to announce that we have made a donation of £2000 to this appeal and am proud that we will be associated with this worthwhile cause.  Councillor Dan Daley a trustee of the Maidstone Trust, came to our Aylesford site to accept the donation.

Today many soldiers from Royal Engineers are on the front line in Afghanistan dealing with improvised explosive devises and our local regiment has lost six of its number in pursuit of this dangerous yet essential work, which no doubt has saved many more lives.

It was to assist those injured soldiers from the Continent in 1919 that we were established and today, we remain committed as ever to assisting those serving, and those who have served our country and therefore it seems entirely appropriate that some of the proceeds from our industries contribute to this noble and publicly spirited appeal.