A ONE-stop shop offering advice for serving and ex-military personnel and their families has opened.

The initiative is a joint venture between the Armed Forces Group and Chorley Council as part of the council’s ongoing commitment to supporting the service community.

Weekly drop-in sessions, which will be held on Thursdays at the civic offices in Union Street, were launched as a pilot scheme after the council agreed to sign a community covenant which pledged to provide opportunities for the armed services to talk about their experiences and involve them within the community.

Coun Bev Murray, the council’s armed forces champion, said: “We want to encourage our local community to support service and ex-service personnel, and their families, living in the borough and to nurture understanding and awareness among the public of issues affecting the armed forces.

“We have recently agreed to sign a community covenant and, as part of that, have launched these weekly drop-in sessions at the council offices as a pilot, to find out just what the issues are facing military and ex-military personnel and their families, so we can find out how best we can support them further.”

The sessions will take place between 9am and 1pm each week.

Issues that people can discuss or find out more about include benefits or pension rights, employment or training, housing or homelessness, mental health issues and post traumatic stress disorder, loneliness, and veterans badge or medals.

Aaron Beaver, liaison officer for the Armed Forces Group Preston, who will be manning the One Stop Shop, said: “There are 17,500 unclaimed pensions across the country, so we are helping to look for those 17,500 people.

“Some of them could be suffering from some form of trauma but there is a whole host of other issues as well.

“I find that people come in because of one issue, but then we can end up dealing with many more others as well.”