It looks as if the government has had to back down on the proposed funding changes for CCFs:
I see this, for the most part, as good news but the identification of the required " efficiencies" will be of interest to all.
" The Ministry of Defence said plans were still on track to open 100 new cadet units in state schools by September 2015. They will be given an extra £2.3m of additional funding found from “efficiencies within the existing MOD cadet budget”.
Indeed - thanks for your support…!
FWIW I have talked to several officers working in this area who are pretty sure they can find efficiencies without an impact on the delivery of cadet training. Some of the middle-managers might squeak.
Bring on a Joint Cadet HQ, that’s what I say…
[quote=“tmmorris” post=22512]Indeed - thanks for your support…!
FWIW I have talked to several officers working in this area who are pretty sure they can find efficiencies without an impact on the delivery of cadet training. Some of the middle-managers might squeak.
quote]
RHQs?
I refer to Lynch Mobs’ contribution to : How much more do we take? 04 Dec 2014 09:20
The work-strands currently in progress will relieve the admin burden idc and will undoubtedly generate savings. I would hope that parallel activity is looking at a better way to utilise the current full time staff . A network of RHQ/WgHQs originally located and configured to meet the requirements of a 1960s’ admin system might be a good place to start?
" The Ministry of Defence said plans were still on track to open 100 new cadet units in state schools by September 2015. They will be given an extra £2.3m of additional funding found from “efficiencies within the existing MOD cadet budget”.
i.e. All the Air Cadet activities that are currently grounded/banned…
Do CCF cadets pay subs like open squadron cadets do? Do CCF units not have a Civ Comm? If not I can’t see why this would be an issue. I would suggest the average parent of a open sqn cadet pays around £10-£15 a month in subs and CWCs working to fund the many things HQAC have shifted the cost of to squadrons. I imagine CCF units didn’t have to find several £K in grants and or via fundraising to get IT when we got landed with Bader and the ongoing costs associated with IT and printing everything at sqn level.
As for funding state school units, I see this as highly contentious. One of the documents I read about this said that state schools can use Pupil Premium money.
From the govt wensite …
By this I assume the membership of new “CCF” units will be limited to those that this money is designed for? If not it’s a misuse of public money. Or, do schools see this money as slush fund for pet projects?
I imagine most squadrons would love a slice of this pie.
Admin burden reduction in relation to the volunteers fell flat on its face.
I think there needs to be more of a “can do” / “work around” mindset among the full time staff, than seems to be evident. If we the volunteers exhibited the same sort attitude that I’ve witnessed among all but one of our WHQ staff over the last 20 years, we would have all packed up long ago.
As for the other point, remember this requires the current incumbents to agree to their demise and unless they are all planning to leave just after agreeing it, they aren’t going to derail their gravy train. Reorganisation of RHQs was a key point of the DIRE report and quickly got passed over.
Do CCF cadets pay subs like open squadron cadets do? Do CCF units not have a Civ Comm? If not I can’t see why this would be an issue.[/quote]
In the ATC, I presume that cadet subs remain with the squadron to pay for whatever is required.
The £150 fee that was proposed for each cadet in the CCF per year was to be paid to somewhere centrally and not useable by contingents/sections. So this would have been in addition to the subs that current CCF cadets pay, and the funding they receive from the schools directly.
Both my sons were in private education and were members of the CCF in the school (one still is). I get charged a set amount each year which is divided by 1\12 and added to the monthly invoice. In addition, I also get charged for annual camps and DoE activities.
In the CCF Unit I’m with now, I understand its a similar set-up where parents pay for 2 compulsory years of CCF (with the 3rd and 4th years being voluntary but still chargeable).
Do CCF cadets pay subs like open squadron cadets do? Do CCF units not have a Civ Comm? If not I can’t see why this would be an issue.[/quote]
In the ATC, I presume that cadet subs remain with the squadron to pay for whatever is required.
The £150 fee that was proposed for each cadet in the CCF per year was to be paid to somewhere centrally and not useable by contingents/sections. So this would have been in addition to the subs that current CCF cadets pay, and the funding they receive from the schools directly.[/quote]
We pay capitation to Wing and HQAC each 6 months (based on sqn strength) from the subs and retain the balance.
The fee sounds a bit suss to me as does the savings from the cadet budget. I think GOM has it right in terms of saving, as efficiency isn’t a word I associate with the public sector, unless they cut something.
Without writing an entire essay on this (which I could) the essence of the argument has been that DYER failed to capture the non-public cost of CCF cadets; all it did do was reveal that the cost to the public of CCF cadets is considerably less than any other flavour. This is (we argued, successfully) because of a large number of hidden subsidies to the MOD in CCFs, mostly in buildings, maintenance, heat, light and transport. Therefore, it made no sense to levy a further charge on CCFs to reduce the public costs in order to fund new CCFs.
More fundamentally, you have to ask yourself if cadets are a Defence tasking or an Education one:
if Defence, who are the DfE to say where the money goes (state/private) or how it is spent? It is not obvious that money should only go to state schools if so;
if Education, it is obvious that the money should only got to state schools; but why are the DfE not paying for the cadet expansion themselves?
More fundamentally perhaps: how can you justify CCF getting a contingent grant, but ATC, etc not receiving this?
At £20 per head per year we were quite happy to lose this… it’s already been cut from £25. It’s a negligible part of the cost of running the unit. This is not fundamental at all.
I thought the contingent grant was a lump sum and then a certain amount per cadet, or is this lump sum already included in your £20 figure, taking account of the number of cadets in your contingent?
As an RAF section of over 100 cadets, we get over £2,000 a year (based on the above). This is not to be sniffed at, and I am sure that our cousins in the ATC would appreciate this sort of amount. True, there are limitations on what it can be spent on, but we have found it helpful.
I don’t understand why we (CCF) get this grant but they (ATC) don’t?
What are the limitations?
I wonder if this is similar to the old Training & Admin grant we used to get. It was based on the number of cadets with extra depending on rank and classification. Ironically as a CWO I was worth more, despite having done all the training etc than newer cadets who would need more money spent on them.
[quote=“orh197” post=22544]I thought the contingent grant was a lump sum and then a certain amount per cadet, or is this lump sum already included in your £20 figure, taking account of the number of cadets in your contingent?
As an RAF section of over 100 cadets, we get over £2,000 a year (based on the above). This is not to be sniffed at, and I am sure that our cousins in the ATC would appreciate this sort of amount. True, there are limitations on what it can be spent on, but we have found it helpful.
I don’t understand why we (CCF) get this grant but they (ATC) don’t?[/quote]
Read DYER and tell me why a CCF cadet costs £650 per year (that includes the grant) but the public cost of an ATC cadet is £1080? and an ACF cadet almost £1600.
I could throw one around and get really upset about why I, as OC Section, only gets 19 PTDs per year, but there are ACF CFAVs happily claiming 50 PTDs and then some (i’m not employed by the school before anybody jumps on me!) and that it was only recently restricted to 50!!
If DYER was designed to bring the cadet forces into line it is failing.
TMM has hit the nail on the head-is it a defence cost for cadets or an education one? For the time being it seems the prevailing view is that it is a defence one.
(Interestingly I believe the proposal this year came about precisely because the DfE threw their teddies out of the pram and refused to pay for cadet expansion, it has probably also helped resolving the issue that Mr Gove self-ejected himself from cabinet…)
Blimey, I take it all back!
DYER says that each CCF cadet costs £557 per year and each ATC cadet costs £1086. I should have asked for an extra £500 to be added to the CCF contingent grant per cadet instead!
Does this explain why they want to expand cadet forces into schools possibly at the expense of community-based units?
In that case, the ACO owes my old squadron about £250,000 for ten years of failing to pay any rent, utilities or bills of any sort…
I suspect the different figures used by DYER come from using different criteria for measurement. It would be useful to see how each sum is apportioned.
Nah IMO it’s down to the fact that many MPs and senior civil servants either went to a fee paying or grammar school, so the model they see is cadet forces restricted to a school, despite the fact that the majority of what MPs see in their constituencies are community units.
I wonder if the costings reflect the fact that a school based unit doesn’t need any infrastructure, maintenance and associated administrative costs, required by community units, that are absorbed by the school. Also if schools are able to use education money for cadets, it is a cost hidden from the defence side.