FORCES veterans are being made more comfortable in their homes thanks to a partnership between the government, a charity and housing association.

Yorkshire Housing’s Home Improvement Agency (HIA) has been helping elderly veterans in North Yorkshire to maintain their independence through a Government scheme alongside the charity Community First Yorkshire.

One of the ways the HIA is helping is by carrying out DIY works and minor household adaptations – works the veterans may have been able to do at one time but are no longer able to do so.

They can be referred either by a friend or family or through an armed forces charity, such as the Royal British Legion.

This is then passed on to the HIA who send out a handyman such as Adrian Southam, who has been with the HIA for nine years.

The dad-of-one, 46, of Northallerton, has a keen interest in the war and has visited the D-Day landing sites at Normandy, France, and the Arnhem battlefields in the Netherlands.

His grandfather, Gordon, served as an ammunition driver in Italy and later worked at the civil defence college near Easingwold.

He said that it was a privilege to be helping veterans in their own homes, with jobs carried out including changing kitchen taps for lever taps at the home of an ex-RAF Maintenance Unit serviceman and gardening for a veteran who served in the second El Alamein battle in 1942.

This veteran was mentioned in dispatches for rescuing his commanding officer on the back of his armoured recovery tank.