Sussex charity installs mailboxes to help homeless veterans
They can be found at GP surgeries, transport hubs and council offices
A Sussex charity is making it easier for homeless veterans and blue-light workers to access financial help.
Squaddie Box CIC is setting up locked mailboxes in public places - providing those who need it with a permanent postal address which enables them to receive the paperwork needed to claim benefits.
Each pod is around the size of an A4 sheet of paper and split into separate boxes.
Dean Wormleighton, CEO of Squaddie Box, said: “I was helping a homeless veteran who was trying to claim a personal independence payment because he didn't have an address. We went through this cycle where you got no address, they can't send you the forms out and I did lots of investigations.
“Eventually we managed to convince the job centre to let him have that information sent to the job centre.
“But he had lost quite a lot of money then, because obviously the months had moved on before he received the paperwork.
“So, I started investigating and trying to find if there's any alternative ways of doing this and lots of people said ‘Oh yeah, there is this, that, that and the other’. But the problem is when you really dig into it, there isn't because a lot of them are actually forwarding systems, so you they get addressed and then they forward it on to you.
“But if you've got nowhere to forward it on to you, how do you receive it? So, at that point, I said ‘Right, well we're going to find a better way of doing this’ and so we came up with the concept of Squaddie Box.”
So far, they have two pods with a total of ten mailboxes with requests for boxes in Crawley, Basingstoke, Chepstow, Swansea, Cardiff and Hastings already in as well.
However, the hardest part is reaching the veterans, according to Mr Wormleighton.
“What we're trying to do is network and connect with other charities that are out there because we're the missing link.
“So, if we can enable the veterans who are homeless to have an address, that means they can then claim benefits, which means they're self-enabling to get money, which means they can start get building the process up to get back to having a home or maybe not a home because some of these people actually don't want a home.
“They're happy living the way they're living, in the back of a camper, in the back of a van, or even in a tent. But at least this way it gives them money. It gives them dignity and it gives them respect.”
The scheme has recently received a grant from the National Lottery and won the Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2025 Veterans Awards.
Mr Wormleighton said: “I wasn't expecting that. It was quite a shock because, we've not been running that long. But it's just amazing to be recognised and so many people came up to us after and said what we’re doing is so unique and nobody else is doing it.
“And it's such a massive thing we’re doing, we can't underestimate how big it is. We're literally changing people's lives, but enabling them to do it themselves, and you just can't quantify what that means to people.”