That’s a shame. Ours has been dead helpful!
He was quick to support the common sense approach regarding our extant Wing policy to include a full safety plan in every event admin order. Wing policy was “include this verbatim in your admin orders”; His words were - “Keep it simple. Do you really expect to require a helicopter rescue from the orienteering event around the corner? If not then don’t bother to include it at all. Most of that safety plan is totally unnecessary for your events”.
It’s good to see that walking no longer disqualifies an ESF. My old unit had a footpath between them and a school which were happy for us to train on, but there is a footpath between the two.
Within the precise letter of the law, that would have disqualified it as an ESF!
If they are supposed to be supporting us and reducing admin, why not. What have they got to lose? All the senior ones are effectively retired.
We can all wish that the people in HQAC do a decent job for us, rather than rolling over for a belly rub.
The acid test for this will be seeing what response we get from local councils when we ask permission to use public spaces, so we can then push it up the chain. TBH there must be someone sitting around in the Army and Air Cadets who haven’t got much to do, if this is being made a requirement. I can I have their job? I’d like that amount of slack time Mon-Fri.
The ESF should be a 10 mile radius of the sqn.
For a man who claims to have all these long years of experience you really are living in a paranoid fantasy land…
If you genuinely believe that someone at HQ (Land) just decided “Hmmm it’s a slow day today… I think I’ll invent a load of red tape especially for the cadet forces…” then you really are as out of touch as we all assume you to be.
Surely it doesn’t take much of a stretch of intellect to see this for what it really is - This is a long standing MOD policy, and for very good reason… The fact that we too are being beaten with it is not because someone has nothing better to do - it’s because they, like most of us, probably have a million other more important things on their to-do list well ahead of “rewrite a policy to cater for a minor user of the defence estate”.
You either forget, or just willfully ignore, the fact that these are not Cadet Force specific policies - we are under the same umbrella as everyone else in defence and these sort of policies were written with the primary user and primary concerns in mind.
If they can’t differentiate between cadets and real military is mind boggling and worrying.
It’s odd that when it comes to using training areas even if booked months in advance for example they are quick to bin cadets, which clearly shows they are able to differentiate. So to say that a policy cannot have a caveat relating to cadet units, is lazy.
I am aware of the former, hence it makes no sense for things that will be parade night activities including sports, basic compass work, leadership, and drill has this OTT level of BS applied. There will be many, many, many squadrons who use car parks to do drill on including us, that now have to go through hoops to do something that is fundamental to what we do and we have just done it. Imagine as a result of this sqns saying we aren’t doing drill as an activity?
You say you’re aware but you don’t really appear to be…
A step in the right direction.
Given that the concern was “risk of legal challenge by landowners” then the next logical step will be waivers for other activities which, clearly, are highly unlikely to attract legal claim - such as those you mention.
You gripe when things aren’t being done, you gripe when they are…
You’re impossible to please.
So, this was an agreement of intent. Has it been staffed, discussed and/or enacted yet?
I imagine that the implementation would vary across the country as it would, I expect, be down to the army brigade in question as to whether any such dispensation would be permitted.
It is A step in the right direction. But doesn’t help my unit when all we want to do is sit in our local park and teach judging distances from a bench.
I have contacted the Local Authority a number of times and they don’t respond to my emails. (Neither does the Wing FTO either… Perhaps it’s me?)
Because it’s admin they don’t need or want to do. What do they lose by not giving us TOPL? Nothing. What do my cadets lose? Essentially all our field craft training because of a policy which doesn’t really apply to what were doing.
If RCs have the power to waive the need for TOPL at all. (Which it seems they do) A better exception policy would be one where units could make a case by case argument regardless of dress, numbers or activity.
I dare say that will all be on the agenda for discussion.
Look at it this way… Our HQ didn’t have to do anything. They could have just gone along with it and they’d have lost nothing. But they haven’t. They’ve very sensibly said “This is crazy. The likelihood of a claim against is miniscule, so we’re just going to say that RCs can waive TOPL when the group are technically acting as civies…”
I’m sure that this line will be pushed when discussions with the Army do take place.
Hopefully the formal decision will then reflect the fact that very few of us train on ‘private land’ which doesn’t already have a public right of way or right of access, and even if we are using Farmer Joe’s field the chance of claim is small.
In the meantime then everyone does what they’ve always done… Quietly ignore it and just sit on that bench for the judging distance lesson.
Totally agree. My Squadron is affected in an almost identical way. It is absurd that without this waiver, we would need full approval to walk on public footpaths, take a few compass bearings, do some map reading and distance judging and observation exercises.