Veterans in Parking Joining forces In 2022, the BPA was proud to launch Veterans in Parking a group to support the ex-forces community working in our sector and raise parkings profile among those leaving the armed services. The group is the brainchild of Dean Fennell-Connell, now sales director at Conduent Transportation, but whose career began with a very different form of transport, as Louise Parfitt finds out uring my time in the navy, I had access to doctors, dentists, state-of-the-art sports facilities, and teams to cook my food and wash my uniform. But when you hand in your ID card, this protective blanket is taken away; you lose the world around you. Dean Fennell-Connell joined the armed services straight after GCSEs, aged 16. When he left, eight years later, to spend more time with his young family, life on civvy street came as a surprise. I struggled with basic stuff. For example, I didnt realise you had to register D 32 It is vital that veterans are welcomed into a community where they can engage with people who understand what they might be going through with a dentist: I assumed l could walk into my nearest surgery when I had a toothache and get an appointment there and then. Another example is notice periods: during an interview, he said he could start the role once he had served the remaining 10 months of his 12-month notice period with the navy. The interviewer had to explain that the company could not afford to wait almost a year to fill the position. Luckily for Fennell-Connell, the company Spur Information Solutions (now Conduent) kept his details on record and later approached him for another role. They had recruited ex-