[quote=“cygnus maximus” post=9322][quote=“glass half empty 2” post=9319]Given we issue the uniform, it doesn’t cost us anything and we don’t charge for replacements, I feel while not exactly fraud, a deposit would be unethical.
It would also be a pita to administer, especially when as I have had, uniform returned 2, 3 or more years after they’ve drifted away/left.[/quote]
I get your point, but even so, we’re not defrauding the RAF either as we’re not making a permanent charge for ‘their’ uniform. Deposits are effectively held as a separate account on the Sqn books, no trouble to administer either really, they pay when they bring their initial joining paperwork back.
It works too, I reckon we had a 60-70% uniform return rate in the past, that’s now 90%+[/quote]
Within the regular RAF (and the active reserves) it certainly used to be the case that personnel were required to pay, personally, for uniform items that had to be replaced prior to their scheduled lifespan. That also included paying for replacement uniform items that were missing when they reached the point of discharge from service, eg if someone PVRd/bought themselves out. No1 dress used to be very (very) expensive to replace if it had, for instance, suffered an ‘ironing accident’.
I can’t really see how this could be viewed as being fraudulent either (I mean charging service personnel for missing/damaged uniform).
Although on our sqn we don’t (currently) charge any uniform deposit, I’d be willing to bet that such a localised procedure finds it’s origins from within classic service practice: perhaps not any longer applied within the wider RAF. I’ve also got a gut feeling that at one time (eg in the early 1980s and prior to then) ATC squadrons may have been financially-penalised for uniforms going missing if Cadets went AWOL especially early in career. Similarly, Cadets if were issued kit late in their service that was still listed as being non life-expired on the scaling (and it was on their personal F668), if they failed to pay HMG on discharge, I’m sure the squadron would’ve been forced to pay. I do know that back in the black-and-white days, RAFP used to be dispatched to provide a friendly doorstep recovery service for all sorts of (nowadays viewed as being trivial) items of kit, from the homes of airmen’n’women…if that also extended to ATC Cadet home addresses, in the 50s/60s/70s I wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised. Too labour-intensive now, though.
wilf_san
ps I shall try and find a No1 SofTT uniform issue list from 1980-something that includes expected lifespans of items…