STOP 🛑 Car Parking

[Cab]

And the answer is…all very interesting but not directly relevant. However, great that you can apply any safety related knowledge to the safety of the children in the Air Cadets. Thank you!

[Giminion]

@Cab

not directly relevant

Thank you for the reply, but can you please elaborate on this specifically?

Because the basic inference without further detail is that you are suggesting that the movement of vehicles and personnel around a vehicle manoeuvring area is not relevant to the movement of vehicles and personnel around a vehicle manoeuvring area.

My job is to make sure this happens safely, and the stop order is due to the risk of this very scenario being discussed - I know that it can be safe and am questioning the rationale for deeming it to be inherently too unsafe to undertake regardless of the implementation of control measures and a set of operating procedures.

[JoeBloggs]

@Cab

but not directly relevant

I would love to know what direct relevance was used in the decision process to stop this activity? I have run many different things within the RAFAC over many years, and car parking when run properly is honestly not that risky. I’ve helped manage large scale car parking events at air shows and similar. We’ve never even come close to a near miss. I’ve already said before higher in this thread:

@JoeBloggs

Sussex Wing used to do a significant amount of this sort of thing in the summer, as a wing wide activity, namely Shoreham Airshow before the crash and Edenbridge and Oxted show before someone realised we were being used as cheap labour to line some people’s pockets. But these events went on for years without incident (relating to parking cars at least, many other incidents!)

It was always made very very clear, you never stand directly in front of the car when guiding it to where you want to go. Want to use a hand signal to get them to pull forward? Always stand to the side. The briefings were always thorough, even going as far as ‘practising’ by getting all the staff with cars to come and park etc. And on show days when cadets were parking real cars, staff were directly supervising. Risk managed. Done.

@JoeBloggs

Car parking and marshalling is an activity that has been going on for decades, generally without incident. I’ve done it loads, for years, and don’t know of any issues directly relating to car parking/marshalling. If a cadet falls down some stairs and seriously injures themselves, will we suddenly put out a stop order banning the use of all stairs until further notice? I doubt it.

What we need is proper proactive risk management, not the reactive mess that we have now. When SMS was last updated, and ACTO 10 was rewritten, all the activities we do were assessed deeming them RtL or not, and at what level they could be approved. That formed the basis of the ACTO 10 activity chart. This was a good step towards proactive risk management/assessment. But maybe this needs to be done in a more specific way per activity. Should we have a generic RA done for every activity listed in ACTO 10? I think so.

It will obviously be very generic, as one persons car parking activity will be very different to the next. But a professional analysis/overview of the specific risks associated with each activity, with appropriate risk mitigations might give us all something to work from. Currently, we’re all winging it really when it comes to risk assessing. Which is why when there is an incident, there’s a massive over reaction.

@JoeBloggs

The biggest risks I’ve come across when running these type of events is our ‘normal’ type risks. Climatic injuries/exposure and angry public. Which are risks that effect us in many other activities. And can be safely managed.

In fact the biggest incident that I am aware of happening was a cadet that ended up getting far too hot, got a nose bleed that was pretty serious, and the then OC Wing refusing to let someone drive them back to the cadet ‘HQ’ because the ‘horse and carriages’ were arriving soon, so no cars were meant to be going through the car parks at the time.

This was Edenbridge and Oxted show, and the IC (OC Wing) and 2IC of the cadet event happened to both be directors of the show. The risk here was their priorities. This was an event that Sussex did for years that involved parking thousands of cars over multiple car parks over a weekend. Generally without incident. Certainly never had an incident directly involving the car movements.

The year of that incident was the last. So clearly that got reported and someone pointed out the massive conflict of interest going on there.

[Arborale]

Oh and collecting up barriers on the Monday of RIAT whilst active traffic movement.

[Piper]

So much absolutely relevant civvie experience is disregarded by the RAFAC.

Thank you for the insightful post showing this attitude comes from the top.

[Chief_Tech]

@Chief_Tech

Personally have seen a number of near misses & have declined to provide cadets to do such events for about the past 10 years so if true it’s well over due.

Quoting myself as it’s a long thread & also that I’m not opposing the change in policy (although the way the decision was communicated/enforced/cascaded was woeful.

@Cab

I would observe that the majority of the commentary herein lacks knowledge of risk-based decision-making, duty holding, ALARP and tolerability and service interest. Not a criticism as not many have had either formal training in such things or, most importantly, experience especially from a 2-star operational duty holding perspective.

My bold. I think this is where part of the philosophical clash is coming from.

A lot of CFAVs are trained & experienced in risk-based decision making.

You have judges, lawyers, company Nebosh qualified H&S advisors, social workers & contingency planners.

You have those who work in education or teaching some of whom are headteachers of large schools - arguably more experienced in making risk based decisions regarding children than anyone in the armed forces.

You have those who are in the emergency services, A&E doctors, nurses, paramedics, senior fire service personnel & police officers.

I know of one CI who is a C/Supt in their day job, qualified to chair gold & silver SCG/TCGs making life & death risk based decisions sometimes using military personnel requested under MACA

This is the nature & strength of volunteers & what results in a lot of the questioning when decisions are not understood.

I imagine the number of politicians & civic representatives people that CFAVs have to deal with is huge compared to what their equivalent in the regular military (I personally knew two ministers in the last government on a social level & they would always ask me how the cadets were doing & what the latest troubles & frustrations were)

The trouble is that the RAF & armed forces are experienced in making decisions around military and aviation matters - less so about the civilian world that is community village fetes & the wider outside world.

I imagine somewhere in the training catalogue of training courses that there is a “vehicle marshalling course” probably for RAF police officers that confirms that they are authorised & trained to marshal & direct traffic.

It then begs the question, particularly if a cadet was injured, that if the RAF didn’t let adults marshal vehicles without a qualification, why would they let 13 year old cadets? God forbid being asked that question by a barrister at an inquest.

the clash is that because these volunteers haven’t done the RAF risk based decision training they can’t be regarded as qualified as from a liability perspective they’ve not done the military course that underwrites & insures the decision if that decision turns out to be the wrong call.

In the majority of cases the CFAVs are the personnel with the greater knowledge & experience than the paid staff to safely deliver an activity.

However the decision & liability lies with the paid staff which is also right as that way a well meaning volunteer is not getting pilloried by the powers that be should things go tilt.

What this means though is that more than any other part of the military the communications within RAFAC/ATC needs to be spot on from the start, with explanations & rationale on each major decision & a respectful understanding that the volunteers are more knowledgeable/experienced that the HQ.

Whilst the volunteers may or may not understand the decisions (& remember they cannot be given a lawful order), they will, in general, be more accepting of something that respects their unique skills & experience and it will in turn build trust between the paid staff & the volunteers.

On a side note, something that undermines the decision making by the paid air cadet staff is when other MoD cadet forces make different decisions to those for the Air Training Corps (CCF get complicated in this instance).

Drones, flying, car-parking, parachuting it seems the ATC loses out whilst the other cadet forces crack on.

Particularly if it is a safety matter where we should be working under similar regs across the MoD, decisions regarding cadet forces should be consistent as it just makes the decision maker to be perceived (volunteer managers deal with perception not reality) as risk averse & not confident in making decisions around risk.

At the absolute worse it makes them appear as disconnected & incompetent which isn’t fair as I pretty sure that this is not the case & the vast majority of paid staff are making if not the right decisions then certainly for the right reasons.

During volunteers week the air cadets were not permitted to post on social media allowing the sea cadets to park their tanks not just firmly on our lawn but in our garage using our kitchen & living room for messing, posting about their success in shooting, fieldcraft, aviation flying and the cadet experience in general.

It is a little embarrassing and something that erodes the trust between the volunteers & the paid staff who, from the ones I know, are fighting the volunteers quarter as best they can under really trying circumstances.

[Piper]

@Chief_Tech

It is a little embarrassing

I would have gone with slightly more robust language.

[Chief_Tech]

@Piper

slightly more robust language.

It’s a bit hard to get embarrassed about the ATC anymore where you attend a Sea Cadet Corps event & Captain Sea Cadets does gently ribbing about how over the past two years they had flown more cadets than the Air Training Corps.

It gets to the point where the gut punches no longer hurt anymore.

I used to tell my cadet NCOs that ATC stood for “Always The Cadets”.

Now the joke from the other cadets forces is that it stands for “All Training Cancelled”

Still we do what we can do

[MikeJenvey]

Spot on analysis - very well said.

[Sm12310]

It’s a difficult one, I can certainly see the point of view from the Squadrons that were involved for fundraising and “community building” with the out of the blue stop notice, if that was overturned now, it would take some trust to be rebuilt again. On the flip side I can see it from RAFAC HQ in the sense of its non-core with liability/risk, not only moving vehicles but heat/cold exposure etc. Although it might have left some aggrieved a broader explanation with some background should ideally have been in place. So when Squadrons are going to x show and saying sorry we can’t do the car parking any more, its not just a because RAFACHQ have said so its more of a because of x y and z we are unable to commit to said activity etc

[bob]

And reading the FoI upthread the AOC had instructed several times that car parking should stop and was surprised that HQAC hadn’t send down the required orders to be implemented.

If his instructions had to be repeated several times, then two things, someone at HQAC needs to be disciplined and if this had been actioned earlier it would have given Squadrons a lead time to speak to organisations they were assisting. HQAC have been deficient in warning Squadrons that this was coming down the line.

[Baldrick]

For me, the lack of lead time is the worst bit of this whole order.

It caused untold reputational and financial damage for the units affected immediately and could have been easily avoided.

[pEp]

People talking about “non-core” need to realise quite what we consider to be core and non-core, or rather what the organisation considers. Just because it isn’t a “core” activity it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value both from a reputational and wider RAFAC viewpoint and to the individual squadron in terms of donations.

The point about climatic injuries is, I’m afraid, clutching at straws. We’ve all done hours of heat illness prevention training to give us the ability to know when it’s too hot, and to take steps about it. Banning something because of the potential of heat means we’d never do anything in the summer.

The fact that a recent FOI has shown there to be 0 incidents or near misses reported recently shows that this isn’t some hugely problematic activity for us, and the fact that the ACF are now helping with an RAF families day event we can’t attend shows that it isn’t an MOD wide directive which it should be if it was liability based.

[JoeBloggs]

@pEp

The fact that a recent FOI has shown there to be 0 incidents or near misses reported recently shows that this isn’t some hugely problematic activity for us,

I think it’s perceived risk vs actual risk. Car parking seems like it’s risky, but when well controlled is not very high risk. Where as something like simply diving to VGS doesn’t seem risky as it’s an every day activity, but it’s arguably way riskier than many other things we do!

Banning an activity based on the perceived risk is what appears to have happened here.

[steve679]

@pEp

People talking about “non-core” need to realise quite what we consider to be core and non-core, or rather what the organisation considers.

on this point it is also listed in ACTO 010 so although not what people (Cadets and CFAVs) join the organisation for, it is very much within the Organisation’s wheelhouse to consider the opportunity

[WellIbedammed]

The perverbial nail on the head, well said

[WellIbedammed]

@pEp

People talking about “non-core” need to realise quite what we consider to be core and non-core

Its not us talking about what is core,/non core that is an issue at ground level we know the losses and gains, It’s about hqac and how they allow us to manage the enabling avtivities such as car parking etc. Maybe car parking could come under fund raising which includes an alternate indemnity so the MOD dont feel that their coffers are at risk for payouts.

[JoeBloggs]

@Cab

We have a robust process which is evidence-based

With ref to this, Sir, I am still yet to see any evidence-based risk assessment that deemed this activity to be too dangerous to continue.

[DontCallMeSir]

I’m keen to know whats been talked about now that might be binned off, just so we have an idea and wont all be shocked when we have planned things to find out…nope cant do that now.

[Giminion]

I’ve worked it out.

We can’t park cars because then there would be nowhere for us to designate the HLZ that we were told needs to be in our admin instructions.

Too many cars = no HLZ!