Doing it outside you will be paying for people’s time. Which isn’t such a bad thing, as you do it in many ways on your terms, rather than “the Wing is doing a ***** and this is when it is”, you then check your diary (or ask the wife!!) and on one or more days you have something else to do, and then you don’t do it. Not because you don’t want to but because you can’t be in two places at once.
To be clear, are you complaining that your wing wouldn’t pay for you to attend a BELA with an external provider vs doing the course internally, in order that you could get the qualification earlier?
I took it to be that the Wing didn’t offer the course and wouldn’t pay for them to do the course externally?
No, my complaint was that I only needed to give two weekends rather than the 10 required by the corps. I offered to do it quicker and at a lower cost to the ACO. They would have had to give me 20 days pay as opposed to paying for me to do the course and me not drawing pay.
I can see why a wing wouldn’t pay for that, after all it’s not like your paid days come out of their funds whereas paying for you to go and do a course with an external provider would have done.