Wrong. You need to seek approval from the budget holder who is the WExO, who won’t view or see all activities that could attract pay or mileage.
No, it’s not just that. But they are a significant contributor to the ‘cost per cadet’ metric identified in the camps & courses letter I identified above.
Yes, people do need to be more savvy - primarily a better understanding of ACTO11, and link the appropriate publicly funded activities categories & elicit the benefits in your application.
Where is that written please.
Except they aren’t really the holder of any budget, or so I understand.
Most importantly. This nonsense isn’t in my region so happy days.
Also ironically if it’s in wales and west… they are saving LOADS of VA right now 
Yeah I’ve had to get my WEXO to overrule a member of Region Staff who was an SME who was trying to limit the number of staff who could claim VA on an activity they saw as overstaffed. (When the whole point was that we were coaching other Squadrons through the process!)
Was this clear in the application though? If it was, then they were wrong. If it wasn’t, then it’s probably a valid question.
Yep at the top of the admin order under “aims and objectives”
In which case, that’s a fair push back.
ACP 300 Annex A to 308 says this: All activities are subject to such pre-authorisation requirements directed by the chain of command.
Point 11.c. of that says: c. There are many other activities that may be undertaken not listed as admissible, so it is important to check with the chain of command before the activity is undertaken.
ACTO 11, point 2 says: All requests for public or central non-public (primarily GPF) support for activity are to be assessed against this ACTO by those responsible for authorising the activity, primarily Wg Ex Os. If entitled to support, the details of what may be paid is contained within ACP 300.
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It is and I agree. People just need to be aware of the need to justify it within the application, not just assume it’s going to get approved without challenge. It’s just a change of mindset that’s required.
Which is why we need a proper IBN or at least it writing into a policy document of some description.
Technically it already is… in that camps & course design principles letter. Which is in the policy library in the Key Documents site on SharePoint.
Obvs our local CoC is relaxed and trusts its OCs… cant believe I just wrote that.
I pity you lot in areas with this needless beauracacy.
I regularly seek pre approval of Accts 80 + 1771 for my events from the WEXO.
I justify all 1771 (easy atm with CV) and my admin paperwork details that Accts 4 should be approved by the WEXO in line with current process.
If we have 28 days VA available should it really matter how this is used so long as it’s done on approved activity types
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I’d say yes it should matter if VA is being used consistently on ‘Desirable’ activities over ‘Core’ activities.
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I appreciate this but just because something delivers the same outcomes doesn’t mean it is as valuable an experience for the cadets.
Part of the pushback from region for my activity was that the Wing had run a week long camp at our (very close) parent station and I should have just sent cadets on that. The cadets on that camp got next to no service engagement due to the nature of our parent station and were effectively doing AT all week. Not to mention that we got barely enough spaces for 5% of our cadets at the time.
I just feel that if this metric is going to be applied it can’t be a mechanical process it needs to consider the quality of the outcomes not just if they are achieved.
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Waking up to 50 of new comments about this I have to say I’m quite amazed. A lot of what’s been said is completely new to me. However, I will say that my mind has maybe been changed a little from reading about what a lot of you have to say.
I said at the beginning of this thread the only time I’ve ever seen any thing challenged financially was essentially proving I was actually at an event, and that the idea of being pre-challenged seen seemed crazy.
I think this is mainly as like @Paracetamol said in down south too and clearly we aren’t doing things the same as W&W.
I think I actually agree with the principal of it now though after seeing @redowling explanation. Just thinking of some activities down here recently that actually looking back could have been done a lot better. I know H&IOW together with Sussex did a gold DofE trip to the dolomites and it seems they has 1 staff member for every 2 cadets.
This needs to happen if these kind of things are going to start happening regularly and at squadron level!!
I’ve never once asked the WExO if I can claim 1771 before an activity. As far as I’ve always been told, if there’s an SMS approved event, then staff can claim travel. The only exception to this rules has been if other transport had been arranged. For example if you’re based in London and going to Windermere for a week, you can’t claim fuel if there’s a coach taking all the staff and cadets. If however you need to leave a day earlier than everyone else then that’s fine.
I think this is a general assumption - it’s the classic line of ‘well, it’s always been approved before’. I’m also in the group that have never asked for pre-authorisation before.
Just because it’s always been done a certain way doesn’t mean that that it’s either correct in accordance with our organisational policies, or that things can’t change.