It’ll be an interesting settling-in period. The building is remaining under RAFAC control, rather than CAA, when they do move in with us. We feel this will help us to ensure they up their standards regarding building admin, but only time will tell.
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To save money requests now go to parenting MT. Sounds as though yours is fobbing you off that they don’t have any on their fleet as 9 seats definitely are still available from the contract.
It’s a no brainer when you step back and look at it. My guess is that without building sharing the request for a new building may have been rejected?
Brand new, many £100Ks of building to be used for maybe 5 hours a week is madness, at least with the ACF you get the economies of scale.
Presumably if you both share a building the shared opportunities for pooling things like air rifle shooting, flight sim etc come more naturally.
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The way it’s going to work is that 2 new rooms have been built on the side of our building; an office and a storeroom. Both of these will be for the sole use of the ACF. Our current offices, stores and flight sim room will be for the sole use of the ATC.
The 2 classrooms, main hall, toilets and outdoor space will be shared facilities.
It does make some sense; our current building replaced a long-standing Spooner Hut back in 2010. Therefore investing in the newer property is logical. The build standard (2010) was very poor though, with large gaps in the walls appears over that time and doorways warping to the extent that some doors were no longer closing correctly. Hopefully the build standard has been higher this time.
What doesn’t make sense, however, is renovating our building and moving the ACF in when so many other buildings across the Wing are still inaccessible Spooner Huts; even on shared sites where’s there’s a Spooner Hut each for the ATC and ACF. In my mind, bringing buildings up to the required standards to meet current disabilities legislation should be a higher priority than renovating a newer, accessible building.
Those of us in CCF see the joys and pain of tri-service working regularly. Some things do work well (most obviously buildings, although often these are school owned but RFCA maintained; and activities on school grounds), but lots of things are a total mess (e.g. three different activity approval processes for the same event, if all three flavours of cadet are included). Truthfully there are grey areas on things like who pays for travel for a tri-service activity; there are areas where the Army deliberately provides for the others (e.g. ranges, weapons, ammunition, ORP).
And don’t get me started on Westminster vs BADER; after around 15 years of this we are basically back where we started, ‘you will put everything on both’.
My view, often expressed before, is we need a single purple cadet force which subsumes CCF, SCC, ACF and ATC; but a lot of people would be put out of a job (that’s partly why it’s a good idea) and so they won’t want it. It would have to be imposed top down. At the grass roots level I would envisage individual units being exactly as they are now, same uniform etc., but above that level everything Joint.
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Should add that one sensible thing in all this mess is that if there is a fieldcraft activity run by the Army section, RAF section personnel can take part and approval is delegated to the Army CoC (in practice therefore the TSA on the Cadet Training Team). That does avoid duplication of checking of the exercise instruction, and also the fact that the RAFAC TSAs haven’t come across the new CASP format yet. Whether that will survive ASTRA is a good question. I hope so.
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I am also CCF RAF and I think it is brilliant for the cadets to mix and take part in joint activities such as Range Days and Drill Competitions etc. as you say for us CCF the paperwork is horrendous as it all tripled…
Our cadets at our contingency are very privileged as they get to do a lot of shooting and green stuff and our Navy section offers them the opportunity for power boating etc as well. We (CCF) had a summer camp at Lossiemouth and invited ATC Cadets too. It was a fabulous experience for all involved and the cadets learned so much from each other, the historic issues ATC v CCF lies with old fashioned staff and adults! The cadets just get on with it and enjoy their experiences. The adults need to wise up and stop putting words into the cadets mouths and planting seeds of hatred amongst the services…
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It all depends on the attitude of the ATF detachments and ATC Squadrons. There always has been in shared buildings a case of they did x and the other etc. When we look at our yearly structure we don’t have time to get involved with ACF with how much is offered already.