If someone is told that’s the end of it imo, get into uniform and get on with it. If they were told at the board the next night at the squadron I’d have them rifling through stores for uniform. Nuts to waiting for any paperwork crawling through the system.
The fact it takes the system so long to catch up is as you say nonsensical and unless they can’t claim at the appropriate rate, irrelevant. One of the problems is we have two systems SMS and Universe (?) which (and here’s a novelty) can’t ‘talk’ to each other. So change something manually on one and it has to be changed manually on the other. With all the tech we’re no better off than we were when it was all bits of paper bouncing around, in fact in some ways we’re worse off, because the tech isn’t allowed or designed to make things easier.
Had my board on the Monday night, phone call to confirm Tuesday night, rifled through stores on the Thursday night, attended a training weekend that began on the Friday night and (after speaking the WWO) wore uniform.
The ATC don’t follow the rules for DBS. (Or they certainly didn’t when it was CRB.)
The process I went through many years ago actually invalidated the application because Wing had ‘tampered’ with it and breached my confidentiality. They also ‘lost’ confidential documents submitted with the CRB and CTC forms.
Everything came through, but the handling of it all was atrocious and the ATC made a complete mess of it at every stage. ACO staffers are all graduates of the same clown college, it seems.
That’s probably why it takes months to do what other orgs do in a week or two.
Only so much you can do really. Unless someone trips a wire you won’t know that you sub commands aren’t playing by the rules. Same applies to squadrons not playing by the rules. Same applies to staff on Sqns not applying by the rules.
[quote=“Plt_Off_Prune, post:46, topic:1982, full:true”]
Only so much you can do really. Unless someone trips a wire you won’t know that you sub commands aren’t playing by the rules. Same applies to squadrons not playing by the rules. Same applies to staff on Sqns not applying by the rules.[/quote]
So what exactly do you mean / are you inferring by this?
At sqn level we are all but powerless to do anything outside the rules. The attending until clearance is obtained has been that way since when we first had to do CRB now DBS, It would have been interesting when we had to first do them, if they had suspended all staff until clearances had been obtained.
The fact that the MOD is living in some quaint 20th Century paperbound existence (to keep bums on seats at all levels) that has been discarded major institutions requiring DBS clearance as a mandatory requirement, is a problem for them, but they make it a problem for us. The fact we may have DBS clearance down to weeks is pyrrhic and hardly worth crowing about, when in the other institutions clearances are in days from start to finish. One of our retired neighbours is a volunteer driver for the local special needs school, he had the interview, he gave them docs which they copied for the DBS, when he got home he checked his email and had a link to the online DBS system (3-4 hours later), filled in the bits they needed to and had the certificate on their mat 4 days later. When they looked at the certificate the clearance was dated two days after they completed the online side. They started the following week. The ATC is nothing like this. Even if we went to this we’d have to send the documents to Wing for them to set up and not what commonsense would dictate which is Sqn Cdrs do it. Of course this doesn’t take into account the other snail mail, paper system for all the other forms and waiting for a WSO interview.
His company/organisation will be using the paid service. Don’t forget we (all cadet forces) get ours for free but we cop for a little bit of a slower service for that privilege. That’s a £44 saving per person. That’s around £88,000 for the MoD a year alone. Let’s say the ACF are a little more and the SSC a little less. I can see the MOD stumping up for thr paid for service any time soon - do you?
As a tax payer, I can wait a couple of weeks. Yes, a couple of weeks is all it takes if you haven’t moved addresses outside of your police force area in the last 5 years (every address that falls in a police force area gets an enquiry from DBS for each application).
When our DBS forms pass through at least 2 MOD post rooms and several desks before it gets to go to the DBS, which is time that doing it online wouldn’t incur, the time to get a clearance increases and isn’t acceptable. While I don’t disagree with the idea that people don’t start until they get a DBS clearance, when the rest of the world gets DBS clearances within days (even those who have moved around), which when you combine it with the overtly lengthy staff application process, it’s not a promising and encouraging introduction to the organisation, although it is realistic and gives them a taste of things to come.
Paid vs voluntary, as an argument is a smokescreen to hide antiquated and outmoded working practices.
But all the indicators are MOD employees would see this normal, which is why I suspect Prune is so defensive of the systems. Like many CFAV I can’t defend it as like the vast majority of CFAV, I work and work in places which are customer focussed and wouldn’t survive if they operated like the MOD’s approach of take it or leave it (no taxpayer bankroll for us) and find it frustrating.
No it’s not. That’s a very good business model to offer a service that doesn’t cripple large charities. Your just reverse engineering it to suit your rhetoric and trotting out the same old guff. If you speak to new staff they full understand and appreciate it. I’ve never met anyone who has complained.
Any CFAV that think we get a good service from the salaried staff up the chain overall (there are one or two no doubt doing a good job at WHQs) have rose tinted glasses and cloudless sunny skies all around them.
This is not about willingness to comply that’s a given if you want to join as staff. This about how far behind the rest of the world the ACO/MOD is in working practices and the hold ups this creates.
Of course it is. If you don’t agree with the house practises which are (should be) explained clearly from the outset, then feel free to look at the ACF. Oh, wait a second…
The problem is that we need these staff. Even if your squadron/sector/wing is in a fortunate position at the moment, the long term future of the Corps is being secured or undermined, little by little, through every action HQAC takes.
Obviously my experience is different to yours, as I find that even long-term and generally well-motivated senior cadets are surprised and disappointed by how laborious the staff application process is.