Suspect that as soon as the answer is “it requires budget expansion” any changes will be token at best and/or volunteers get shafted even more.
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Tough to see how it’s even possible.
Funding for buildings is so limited that no unit will be getting anything bigger than is absolutely necessary.
We’re fortunate to have amazing digs, but we’re butting-up against our max headcount with cadets alone, let alone our increasing staff team. Unless we can sweet-talk the Army Reserve into lending us hall space, we can’t grow further unless we take on a bonus parade night.
They need to focus on keeping what we have. Stop spending money on gimmicks and seriously focus on what we already do well, and keep doing it well.
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If it’s CEP within schools then they don’t have to pay for the building maintenance & infrastructure - throw in the fact that the ATC use a different cadet management system then things don’t look rosy for the light blue side of cadet world.
Didn’t they reduce funding incentives for the CCF?
In order to increase our productivity we’ll be asked to parade 3 nights a week.
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That was the SSI grant which was a bonus introduced in Covid & now discontinued not CCFs as a whole.
A number of Squadrons are parading on three night just to keep up with the range of activities. That’s fine if you have the staff to cover three nights.
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I’ll think of something soon
Or you haven’t been forced into a Joint Cadet Centre where you don’t have the option of extra nights.
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If our organisation wasn’t 100% reliant on slave Volunteer labour : that would work well
Sqn’s such as yours who already have a defined flight structure could rely on that, and improve it’s effectiveness
Mon - 1 & 2 Flts
Wed - 1 & 3 Flts
Fri - 2 & 3 Flts
but alas, the MOD decides they’d rather pay Reserves to run UOTC,UAS, URNU and pay the cadets to attend them, than get us PS who can be the “Skeleton crew” for Sqn’s.
For reference, Just paying the UAS Cadets costs approx £1.8M, not accounting for the OTC and RNU, and all the subsidised AT they do.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t allow CFAVs, but too often are you expected to bend to what the Org wants rather than what you need, and if they want to expand they can’t expect every member of staff to be able to accomadate that, what then?
To be honest, I’ve long felt that the UAS shouldn’t really get any money.
They get complimentary flying lessons and cheap drinks (and they could be given complimentary accn if they aren’t already)… people would pay a fortune for that.
1 Army Scholar has the opportunity to cost the taxpayer £28,600 just in money going into their account:
1 * scholarship payment of 3000
4 * UOTC avg pay of 1600
4 * Enhanced bursary of 6000
1 * commission bonus of 6000
(assuming they go for a BSc/BA/BEng in Scotland)
all that for one person, not including as you say training costs, booze subsidy, Uniform, absolute absurdity
meanwhile my old Sqn had to drop to 1 night a week due to us only having 2 staff members, 1 of whom was a SI with obligations elsewhere on Tuesday
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I’m pretty sure that’s how it used to be, which is why I was looking at UOTC instead (and ended up joining the TA proper, because OTC cadets get a reduced bounty and pay).
I won’t hold my breath. It isn’t like the last Cadet Expansion Programme actually benefited existing cadet units.
Destroyed two units that I can think of!
Just can’t see it happening
A). Lack of money for accommodation and infrastructure
B). Extreme lack of staffing and getting people involved on Staff side
C). Red tape in the extreme that limits an excellent programme
There does seem to be the appetite generally from youngsters though
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I think more accurately, there’s appetite from parents for cheap activities.
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A is solved by expanding the CCF - the big costs of accommodation are bourne by the school including utilities
B comes from utilising school staff & parents
C can’t be reduced much except to have the ATC move over to Westminster so there’s no dual systems any more making it easier for new RAF sections to be created.
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The issues with red tape go far beyond the systems in use, the whole military bureaucratic mindset is the issue.
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The military has moved on from much of the bureaucracy described on here. Pay and expenses, for example, are entirely online (with ‘apps’ so they can be done on PEDs rather than JPA).