Nick Pett, Head of Armed Forces Families and Safeguarding Armed Forces People Policy
Nick is the Head of Armed Forces Families and Safeguarding (AFFS) in the Ministry of Defence. He has been an MOD civil servant since 1999, joining the Senior Civil Service in 2014, and taking on this role in 2023.
His career in Defence includes a series of roles in the Civil Service Fast Stream before his first leadership and managerial appointment in Strategic Plans in 2005 working on military operations in the Near East and security issues in Darfur. Nick was then a Chief Press Officer in MOD between 2007 and 2011 with a focus on the investigations of operational deaths including multiple fatality incidents, the Armed Forces Covenant, compensation, and the Gurkhas. From 2011 to 2017 Nick was the Head of the Disclosure Coordination Unit principally managing MOD’s disclosure obligations in human rights litigation arising from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2014 he was also the Head of the Defence Inquests Unit, looking particularly at investigations relating to Northern Ireland.
Nick attended the Royal College of Defence Studies from 2017 to 2018 before returning to roles in support of operations including Carrier Strike Group 2021, the resolution of a historic debt to the Government of Iran, and strategy for military activity in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. In recent years, while Head AFFS, Nick has had additional responsibilities for the implementation of the Defence Catering Strategy, and the SRO for the development and launch of the HM Armed Forces Veteran Card, including its digitisation. Nick also supports equity, diversity and inclusion networks in MOD, for several years as the deputy champion for the LGBTQ+ network, and more recently as an advocate for the African-Caribbean network.
