Chris Bennett

In 2013 I found myself with a dilemma, to stay in the Army or leave as part of the down scaling of the armed forces and take redundancy. So After 16 years of service as Artillery Reconnaissance serving in Bosnia, Kosovo Iraq, Cyprus and two front line tours of Afghanistan, I felt like it was my time to start a new chapter.

As I was leaving the forces I retrained as a Fibre Optic and Copper Network engineer but soon realised this was not for me.

I found work straight away from leaving the Army, but it was not the dream job I was hoping for, it was scraping Barnacles of the bottom of sailing boats.

At this point I was feeling pretty low and that I had made a massive mistake in leaving the forces, I felt I had lost a family, a lifestyle and more importantly to me a Purpose.

So, after jumping to another few jobs, I was given the operativity to work for Sanctuary Property services as a Trade Supervisor in the reactive and DTD team. This is the best job I could have hoped for it provided me with work that is constantly evolving, the ability to make snap decisions and most of all a purpose (to provide safe, secure quality social housing). I have now been with Sanctuary for 4 years and I’m always looking to recruit Ex-forces members into my team and other teams but also help them adjust to new way of life.