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CONNECTING WITH THE COMMUNITY RESERVE FORCES AND CADETS ASSOCIATION for Northern Ireland ANNUAL REPORT 2017 | 2018 CONTENTS RFCA NI OVERVIEW 03 CHAIRMAN’S INTRODUCTION 04 CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S SUMMARY 06 RESERVES 07 EMPLOYERS 09 CADETS 10 SCHOOL CADET EXPANSION PROGRAMME 12 PATHWAY ADVENTURE ACTIVITIES 12 CIVIL ENGAGEMENT 13 ESTATES 14 FINANCE 15 HUMAN RESOURCES AND IT 15 MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS 16 UNIT SUMMARIES 17 HMS Hibernia 18 2nd Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment (2 R Irish) 19 152 (North Irish) Regiment Royal Logistic Corps 21 204 (NI) Field Hospital 24 253 (North Irish) Medical Regiment 27 591 (AA) Field Squadron, 71 Engineer Regiment 30 B (North Irish Horse) Squadron, The Scottish & North Irish Yeomanry 33 40 (North Irish Horse) Signal Regiment 35 Army Training Unit (Northern Ireland) 37 62 Military Intelligence Company 39 157 Field Company, 106 Reme Battalion 41 Queen’s University Officer Training Corps 44 502 (Ulster) Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force (RAUXAF) 47 CADET SUMMARIES 49 Northern Ireland District Sea Cadets 50 1st (Northern Ireland) Battalion Army Cadet Force 52 2nd (Northern Ireland) Battalion Army Cadet Force 55 Northern Ireland Wing Air Cadets 58 COMBINED CADET FORCES 62 Bangor Grammar School Combined Cadet Force 62 Foyle College Londonderry Combined Cadet Force 63 Royal School Armagh Combined Cadet Force 64 2 RCFA Annual Report 2017/18 RFCA NI OVERVIEW RFCA NI, like its twelve sister organisations across the UK, is a civilian, autonomous, non-departmental government body (underpinned by an Act of Parliament) with a pre-scripted structure and membership that reaches across society throughout Northern Ireland. It has two formal functions, namely: Non-Executive: The Association acts as a champion and conscience for Armed Forces reserves (circa 2,000) and cadets and their adult volunteers (circa 5,000), as well as their stakeholders – employers, local authorities, parents, schools etc – across the Province. It does so through its voluntary members and Board, led by its Chairman, that report through a national board to the Defence Council and Parliament. Executive: Under the direction and responsibility of the Chief Executive, the Association is accountable for: • Delivering reserve and cadet infrastructure. • Administering and providing support – to differing degrees – to all types of cadet organisations. • Providing life support to reserves, including finance, recruiting, PR and community relations. • Acting as the lead interface between employers and reservists. • Developing, nurturing, sustaining and maintaining links across the community. • Acting as an advisory body to the Ministry of Defence on regional matters. Particular to Northern Ireland, the Association uses its networks, structure and resources to engage in a wide-ranging youth outreach programme “Pathways” and is working hard to develop a robust structure that facilitates better coordination and delivery of support to our veterans. RCFA Annual Report 2017/18 3 the latter under the auspices of the Marine Society CHAIRMAN and Sea Cadets. A further two are in the pipeline, all As I come to the end of my tenure as Chairman, I being steered by our School Cadet Expansion Officer take the opportunity to look back over the last five (SCEO). As ever, our cadets perform staggeringly well years to remind us all of the remarkable changes that at national level. Do read about their achievements have taken place, both for the Association and, more later in this report, but I would highlight our shooting importantly, for the constituents we serve. Much of results; over 40 shots in the top 100 at Bisley is this change has been driven by austerity but, equally, astounding. Thank goodness they are on our side so much is the result of concerted efforts to stay abreast to speak! of a rapidly developing “operating” environment. At the same time we have been able to support Estates and help exploit our community’s appetite to Austerity has arguably hit infrastructure budgets to produce reserves, cadets and adult instructors of the a greater extent than any other area across defence. finest pedigree. Allow me to give you my headline We oversee a regional volunteer estate that is in observations across each of our areas of functional better condition than any other. However, virtually interest. non-existent maintenance budgets and the fact that we are, overall, “under-scaled” (that is to say Future Reserves 2020 insufficient facilities to give reserves and cadets what The FR20 exercise – involving an increase in reserve in theory they should enjoy), present challenges in numbers as a proportion of overall numbers in the coping with increasing numbers. Having said this, Armed Forces and, more significantly – a greater the application of imagination, a really professionally integration of reserves into a whole force structure – engaged estate staff, the addition of our own funds has dominated the past 5 years. At the national level, raised elsewhere and the wide shoulders of our the Army in particular struggled to meet recruiting Chief Executive, have culminated in the opening targets, not helped by a struggling commercial of two state of the art cadet facilities in Omagh and contract. Many of the challenges have now been Ballynahinch. At time of writing, we await a political overcome. Behind this headline though, NI has decision as to whether NI will receive an additional, shone – across all three Services. In recent weeks significant injection of infrastructure monies to build an additional further approximately 200 Army posts new facilities for our growing numbers. have been added to liabilities, taking our Region’s contribution to over 7% of the whole, against less Engagement than 3% of the population. And we use them – to The role that the RFCA plays in both engaging with wit, as an example, the highly successful deployment the local community on the part of Defence and in of a contingent from 591 Engineers to South Sudan, facilitating engagement by the individual Services partly with reserve medical support from NI. is one of our most important functions. Strides have been made locally to realise more effective Cadets co-ordination. I hope that the creation of Defence Our cadet recruiting is now healthier than at any Relationship Management (DRM) at MOD level with a time I can remember. The Air Training Corps (ATC) remit to oversee all of this and with our own Regional is the one exception, but we note a number of Employer Engagement Director (REED) appointed as dynamics responsible and are working with the ATC the DRM lead regionally will help this process. to help rectify this. Army Cadet Force (ACF) numbers in particular are very impressive. Of particular note Wider Youth Engagement and Pathways is the success of the Cadet Expansion Programme The Pathways programme and its extraordinary – creating more Combined Cadet Forces (CCFs) success is well covered later in the report. However, in state schools. The original target for NI was an the scale of its activities (we now employ over 100 additional two. Three new contingents are already full and part-time staff and in the last year have up and running – Bloomfield (in partnership with engaged with some 60,000 young people) and the Campbell College), Lisnagarvey and Cookstown, impact it has had on deprived communities have, 4 RCFA Annual Report 2017/18 not surprisingly, given the Association an enviable the members, to the immediate Association staff and profile (as well as influence and insight) across not to our wider stakeholders for their engagement and just the wider youth sector, but government as a support to myself and the Board during my tenure. whole. I truly believe that this level of engagement, It has been an extraordinary honour to have been with patience, will deliver significant benefits both to your Chairman and I have no doubt that my worthy defence and community integration more widely. successor will oversee the on-going growth of our contribution both to defence and wider society Support to Veterans across Northern Ireland. The Association now oversees the newly established Veterans’ Support Office (VSO NI), with a specifically Thank you for your on-going support. recruited development manager, which provides a service to seek help for those veterans whose Colonel HK McAllister needs are not met by statutory services such as the OBE TD DL VR NHS or by Service charities. This is in the context of the application of the Armed Forces Covenant in NI and the recognition that security concerns and local legislation are such that not all veterans receive the level of support that exists elsewhere. We face a particular challenge, though, in communicating to individual veterans this service and how it can help them. I hope that our members from Local Authorities will be able to help take this forward. Internal structures In order to cope with all these initiatives the Association has gone through a considerable degree of internal restructuring. That has been the business of the Chief Executive and the Board is very happy with how, in effect, we have moved from three pillars of output delivery to five within a broadly similar set of resources. This has taken our level of output to a new level and one that far exceeds that delivered elsewhere. What has been within my remit to control is the structure of the Board to support these changes. If we the members, represented by the Board, are to fully exercise our “Haldane” function then we must ensure that the Board represents the society with which we are engaged and has the professional expertise across all the Associations’ functional areas to enable the Board to add value. To that end, I have overseen the restructuring of the Board and the setting up of associated sub- committees to include representation from the youth sector, veterans, local government, higher education and wider business and all of this to include up-to- date expertise.

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