The Work of RNBT
From your first day in the service you have been part of the RNBT Family – a short way of describing everyone who is eligible to be considered for assistance from the RNBT. As well as ratings and other ranks (both past and present), eligibility extends to wives, husbands, dependent children and, in some circumstances, unmarried partners and those who are separated and divorced.
The RNBT is the biggest of the benevolent funds for naval people and, in the RNBT Family, it has a very large group of people to serve, estimated at well over two million.
Some recent examples of the RNBT’s wide ranging assistance include: special equipment for the disabled daughter of a Chief Petty Officer; care of the 102 year old widow of a senior rating; a contribution to the costs of a major pilgrimage to the Falklands Islands by veterans of the 1982 conflict; funeral expenses for a former Leading Steward who was locally entered into the RN in Malta; a retraining course for an ex-Royal Marine; assistance to a young female rating with the expenses of a new baby; and financial support for the care of members of the RNBT Family in hospices in Portsmouth and Plymouth.
The RNBT not only exists for the benefit of ratings and other ranks, it is also run by them. They provide three quarters of the trustees, who control the RNBT, and almost all of the members of the Area Committees.
It all started in 1916 with the Grand Fleet Fund, when Admiral Jellicoe, of Battle of Jutland fame, decided that ratings and other ranks needed their own charity and they should be involved in running it. Then in 1922 the Admiralty set up the RNBT, which consolidated the Grand Fleet Fund and some smaller funds into a single organisation, maintaining the same principle of control by ratings and other ranks. In recognition of its origin the full name of the RNBT is ‘The Royal Naval Benevolent Trust, Grand Fleet and Kindred Funds’.
The main business of the RNBT has always been grants – financial assistance – to help people in difficulty. The circumstances in which grants can be given must normally involve ‘necessity or distress’ (in the words of the Royal Charter) and the possibilities are almost endless.
Help is given for food, clothing, rent, mortgage payments, house repairs, disability aids, household goods, training courses, medical matters, removals, funerals, respite holidays, all sorts of financial difficulties and much more. Grants can range from relatively small amounts up to thousands of pounds.
Applications are usually made with the help of a caseworker from RNBT, NPFS or SSAFA Forces Help. Each case must be considered by three members of the Grants Committee who decide whether a grant should be made and, if so, how much it should be.
All the members of the Grants Committee are ratings or other ranks – some serving some ex-serving - who volunteer for this role. Between them they have a great deal of experience of life, especially naval life and the problems experienced by naval people, so they are well placed to make the decisions.
