People who have been moved out of a dedicated ATC hut and into a JCC, what has the experience been like and has it yielded net positive or negative results from a cadet’s perspective and staff perspective.
My childhood unit lost its home during the pandemic.
“Fortunately”, another local unit had also disbanded, leaving its building available (though almost lost to the Army Reserve).
On the one hand, the location is really bad. Our traditional recruiting ground is still our biggest, but we really struggle with people relying on car shares to make twice-weekly attendance work. When your parents are driving 2hrs per night all-in, that’s a huge hurdle… a serious weakness of the cadet forces is that we’re one of the few extra-curricular activities that can’t make any provision for parents to remain in situ without being stuck in a car all night.
On the other hand, our JCC is among the best I’ve ever seen. We even have a range beneath the building, meaning we don’t have to shut anything else down to run it.
I’ve always tried to prioritise proactive and positive comms with my ACF colleagues, but when you do stuff on different nights of the week it can be tough to work together in a meaningful way.
I’d welcome much more national standardisation and a common Bader / Westminster to allow us to attend common activities much more easily.
3 Likes
Off topic: one of our parents solved this issue by becoming a CI 
1 Like
We moved from the traditional wooden hut into a dedicated JCC built for us and the local ACF unit.
It was great for about 2 years - the first we knew of issues was when the canteen floor collapsed and we got “kicked out” for repairs. The building is a metal frame with cladding. Any moisture ended up in the cavity below the building and slowly made its way up the frame and attacked the flooring first. We still have issues with damp appearing on the ceiling in certain rooms and RFCA’s “fix” isn’t working.
Other than that, it’s not big enough. We’ve run out of space in the stores, so we’ve had to change the general office into a satellite store. All staff use the OC’s office currently. The main parade hall can only take 24 cadets on first/final parade without going to 4 ranks or without intervals. Luckily we have a lot of space outs…. oh hang on they got rid of a lot of our outdoor space and now we sit hidden behind a local school annex.
As mentioned earlier, we “share” with the ACF - the building is a mirror image, our offices on one side of the main hall and theirs on the other. We share classrooms so we can’t leave any kit out between parade nights. Except that’s not a problem currently, our local ACF unit closed down 18 months ago so we’re the sole occupants. Can we use their stores and offices? Nope. Not allowed.
It’s not so bad for activities, 3 classrooms, and I can run 5m air rifle, I set up the firing point in the entrance hallway and fire into the main hall. Building is locked down while we shoot, so it better be decent weather so the rest can do activities on the school field.
This is a staff whinge - the cadets don’t seem to notice the limitations we have with the building.
It’s still miles better than the old wooden hut. And we have off road parking and a secure sqn compund, compared to on road parking and the hut sat right next to a public footpath with no security.
Slightly different.
Moved from a small ATC unit, with its own dedicated building… to a JCC.
Nearly 70 ATC cadets, and 10 ACF, but they tried to rule the roost. The then ACF DC was removed after a while, and I had a great working relationship with his replacement…. Even having joint evenings.
It can work well, and needs both OC and DC to work well together.
1 Like
Things like cleaning regimen can be tricky.
We’ve tried a few things.
The latest is that we’re going to deep clean the unit once per month and have enough gear to allow everyone to pile in for a good 20 minutes of cleaning.
Then any specific mess can get swept up on the night it occurs.
I’ve clarified what we’ll be doing and have asked the ACF to consider the same approach, but a couple of weeks offset. That means the place should get 1-2 thorough cleans per month.
Before we tried splitting things, but I found that things that weren’t everyone’s problem were perhaps not viewed as a problem.
Seen that a number of times. Despite being the smaller unit in number of cadets and staff, they think they own the whole thing due to a CAA being involved.
“The ACF aren’t allowed to do that, so you can’t….”
That’s inaccurate. Whatever is there that the ACF can’t do but we can? More paperwork?
1 Like
The ACF control so many policy’s and safety changes within RAFAC specially when it comes down to shooting and fieldcraft
Fieldcraft possibly isn’t the best example. I’d describe it more like they’re historically better at it so we use their training manual to provide consistency and best practice.
1 Like
And shooting is controlled by the Small Arms School Corps (SASC) of the Regular Army, rather than the ACF.
There’s a SASC QMSI at RAF Honington, so this doesn’t just go for RAFAC.
1 Like
Fair enough 