Rare unanimity broke out among Swindon’s councillors when it comes to supporting ex-forces personnel - eventually.

Labour councillor Will Stone, himself a former soldier in The Rifles, the regiment that is a continuation of the Wiltshire regiment, introduced a motion which mandated the council’s Armed Forces Champion, Coun Lawrence Elliott, to write to the Army, Navy, and RAF welfare services to ask for advice and write a report for the adults' services scrutiny committee on their findings, to help improve the support that the council provides.

He said: “This is a subject close to my heart. I left the army five years ago, and in this short period of time, four people I had the pleasure of serving with have taken their lives, this is truly heartbreaking. These are just the people I knew personally. The figures on veterans suicide are staggeringly high, on average 90 a year.

“I feel we owe them and their families more. We need to do our best to protect the people who have once protected us.”

Coun Elliott spoke saying the motion was redundant and asked councillors to vote it down: “Contacts have been made with a wide variety of groups and individuals including Veterans Clubs, RAFA, Voluntary Action Swindon, Brize Norton, The About Turn Project, SSAFA and many more.

"It rapidly became apparent that health, both physical and mental, housing and education were the three top priorities which were affecting veterans. But overarching everything was a need to be valued after serving, a sense of worth.

"A crucial element of which we identified early on was somewhere to meet up with other veterans to share experiences - a hub. I have therefore made contact with and visited several potential locations and hope to have some positive news shortly on this.

"Communications and education are also vital in this area. To give veterans their sense of worth we wish to remind residents of what service personnel, past and present, have done for us.

"To start this process, a social media post was released on 'Salute our Forces' Day.

"In November we are looking at making a bid from the Forces For Change funding to help our work with veterans."

Labour councillors Kevin Small and Jim Grant praised Coun Elliott for the thoroughness of his answer and said it would make a good report to a committee as mandated by the original motion.

With the removal of the instruction to write to the separate armed forces, the motion was passed unanimously.