Do those ‘We R Blighty’ fundraisers outside stations really deserve your cash?

On a bright, cloudless morning outside Liverpool Street Station, two men call out to passersby: “Help for our homeless veterans mate?” The shorter of the men dons a khaki green Mercian regiment beret and badge, and a jumper of the same hue; his colleague has on civilian dress— shorts and a grey t-shirt. 

They have a table in front of them with a card machine, a resealable donation bucket, and some literature on it. A white retractable banner sporting the insignia of “We R Blighty” lets the public know the organisation the men belong to. Wedged between a Union Jack and an image of a large tank, “Supporting our homeless veterans” is pasted across the canvas.

Their pitch to the public seems straightforward enough: give us some spare change and we’ll use it to improve the lives of homeless veterans. And yet, We R Blighty faces a barrage of awkward questions, including an investigation over “financial irregularities” by Kent Police. That hasn’t stopped the fundraisers from appearing at major stations across London and the South East, so a few weeks ago, I decided to have a look at We R Blighty myself. 

Let’s start with Neil Winstone from Sussex. He told The Londoner he was overcharged for a £5 donation he made to the group after he met a group of fundraisers. The transaction took place using a card reader and Winstone specifically remembers he agreed to pay a fiver. But after reading negative posts about the group online, he grew suspicious and called his bank, who told him £20 had been taken out. 

“When I rang the registered office of Blighty to complain, they said they would call me back,” Winstone told me. “Of course they didn’t.” The number Neil called is, according to the Who Called Me service, primarily associated with telecoms phone spam activity. When The Londoner called this number a “receptionist” answered. When asked if the company had a physical address we could visit he said that they did, but that he didn’t know where it was.

Another person, speaking to me anonymously, says that a We R Blighty fundraiser who approached them became “really threatening” when asked for a permit. The individual, who suffers with a disability, says they were left “shaken… (they) started shouting at me, calling me a jobsworth… they were in my face.” 

These allegations seem to support a string of complaints made about We R Blighty on the The Walter Mittys Hunter Club, a 20,000 strong Facebook group mainly run by former veterans and dedicated to exposing perceived crimes against the honour of the military. W R Blighty’s founder Ben Mills is engaged in a massive row with the members of the Facebook group, who he says are posting “fabricated” claims about his organisation. “Everything that's been ever written online” Mills tells The Londoner, “is fabricated, completely smeared”. 

Whatever the merits of the online claims, we have found firm evidence that We R Blighty has made misleading claims on its website. Online, We R Blighty claims to be part of the Chartered Institute of Fundraisers, the membership body for UK fundraising. However, the CIOF told The Londoner, “We R Blighty is not a member.”

There are other things about We R Blighty’s online presence that appear to be misleading the public, including two separate individuals giving the same word for word endorsement of the company on its website, a fake Facebook account giving the false impression of public support for the organisation, as well as testimony on its Facebook alongside photos of veterans who look suspiciously AI-generated (Mills denies making up any of these testimonials). 

At times, We R Blighty seems to have given the impression that it is a charity. It described itself as a “pioneering charity” in a news release on its website, and multiple photographs were taken of the group collecting beside a banner reading “Charity starts at home” in 2023. But in fact, it is not a charity but rather a Community Interest Company, or CIC, a form of limited company which operates “to provide a benefit to the community they serve”. 

Mills told The Londoner that the “Charity starts at home” slogan was just a riff on the slogan “We should look after our own” and not intended as a misrepresentation of the group’s status. But we have also seen emails from Mills signed “We R Blighty, Registered Charity, 14349080”.

As private companies, CICs are not subject to the same transparency rules that govern charities, which makes it more complicated to work out how much of the money raised by We R Blighty actually goes to veterans. Mills says the group took in £600,000 last year, with at least half of that going to his paid fundraisers, and, he says, £264,000 being spent on veterans. Mills himself claims to have earned £22,ooo in his role as head of operations.

Mills is a 40-year-old veteran from Kent who served in Iraq and Kenya as a class 1 aviation specialist within the Army Air Corp, and a Class 1 Driver operator. He brims with self-assurance and standing out from a thicket of dark tattoos on a forearm are the words, “We Never Surrender”. We R Blighty is a family business. He runs it alongside his partner Danielle Vidler. His mother Sally was formerly a director, and his brother Louis is an employee. 

An individual close to the Mills family told us that they witnessed Louis Mills stealing from the charity's buckets, and claims he was making up to “£800-£1000 a day from rich people”. The source says they saw members of the group cut through cable ties on the side of the sealed buckets at the end of the day and, through a slit, “pull the cash out, leaving all the coins in”. 

It’s very difficult to verify these claims, and it’s important to note that both Ben and Louis Mills deny them vociferously. When we approached Louis, he said: “I have never stolen from a bucket and I definitely do not earn £1000 a day."

After leaving the army, Ben Mills worked in sales for Scottish Power, and later as a consultant for the highly controversial deVere group. DeVere has faced millions of pounds worth of fines from authorities in Hong Kong, Singapore and the USA and been banned from operating in South Africa. The company was also at the centre of a scheme that resulted in 10,000 British expatriates and UK savers, losing £2.37 billion, with investigators claiming millions was siphoned off by those running the firm. 

Mills denies all of the allegations put to him by The Londoner, claiming that they have been concocted by the Walter Mitty Hunters Club. Mills says he himself is the victim of threats from the group. An admin for the Facebook group told us: “Individual page contributors may have threatened him/them, but we, the page, have not, nor do we condone threats or violence.” 

Mills also told the Londoner that “every single testimony endorsement is 100% correct” and that the CIOF “have put our membership on hold”. Despite this fact, We R Blighty’s website still claims “All of our members are members of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising.”

In response to allegations that money was being stolen by fundraisers, Mills claimed that “the buckets can't be stolen from… (because) you can’t get into the buckets”. He added that, “Buckets are counted by the field manager every day. Some are counted on camera if there's no manager available.” 

Critics of the group are incensed by a lack of transparency and the way the public is being misled. One of the ex-military admins of the Hunters Club, explaining his anger to The Londoner said, “these funds could have gone to a legitimate organisation, and instead it goes…. where?”