‘I love what I do’: MBE for local SSAFA volunteer and Royal Navy veteran

18 June 2024

Kevin Ebsworth, late the Royal Navy and now treasurer for the Herefordshire branch of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, has been appointed as a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in His Majesty The King’s Birthday Honours.

Kevin – who was born in 1956 and lives in Malvern – was honoured for services to Armed Forces veterans and to charity in Herefordshire.

His service in the Royal Navy spanned some 23 years until 1996, and saw him spend time on many ships and shore establishments. He left as a Chief Petty Officer.

His first posting was to Northern Ireland in 1974 as an 18 year old, and from there he joined HMS Blake at the beginning of a nine-month Far East “cruise”. He remained far from his beginnings in Lewisham, where he was born, for a further two years, but with his young family, at HMS Tamar (a stone frigate) in Hong Kong until early 1980.

In 1982, he was part of the original Falklands conflict contingent on HMS Hydra which operated as a hospital ship ferrying casualties from the islands to Montevideo. Later deployments included HMS Newcastle on Gulf patrol and later off the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk, tracking the Soviet fleet and its submarine activity.

His last ship at sea was the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible.

Like Kevin, she too saw action in the Falklands Conflict, and among many other reasons for wanting to serve on her, Kevin says: “I wanted the biggest ship as I get really bad sea sickness!

“It was a hard life on ‘Invince’, especially the six months in the Caribbean…”.

His final five years in the Navy were spent in the slightly less tropic HMS Daedalus, Lee-on-Solent, where the risk of sea sickness was considerably less.

Kevin then worked as a financial consultant for 12 years, first with Lloyds then four years self-employed before finishing his time with HSBC. He left just after the financial crash of 2008, and has been retired since then, and says that “… it was a bit of a struggle at first, but has now worked out well.”

His voluntary work as a caseworker for SSAFA started in 2009 after a chat with a friend – a SSAFA volunteer and Kevin realised that the fact-finding and diligence required of a caseworker would be a good use of the experience he developed and used in the financial sector.

“I used to enjoy delivering financial solutions for clients while working in Financial Services,” added Kevin, “and felt that my 'skillset' would probably be a good fit and I'd be helping others not so fortunate as me. This is always the rewarding part of the role. However, I wasn't a caseworker for long, as the branch treasurer left and it's amazing that people think if you have a financial services background, you'd automatically make a good treasurer when really you just need common sense and a bit of logic.”

“It goes without saying that I'm very proud to have been awarded an MBE, which was an extremely pleasant surprise. I'm also very proud of being part of the excellent Herefordshire branch team.”

Kevin ended simply saying: “I love what I do.”