EMERGING ISSUES
EMERGING T
NEM Consultation is Launched
he Rt Hon Mark Francois MP, Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, has launched
a consultation exercise on the modernisation of terms and conditions of service through the New Employment Model (NEM). The consultation runs from 20 June until the end of October 2013 and a range of engagement methods will be used including presentations, focus groups, online surveys and interviews.
At the launch, both the Minister and the Chief of Defence Personnel were very clear that the consultation process includes not only serving personnel but their families as well. Everybody is therefore strongly encouraged to complete the online survey before the end of October. Feedback from the Consultation will be used to shape the detailed policy and contribute ‘to the design of a modernised and rebalanced offer for the Armed Forces’.
The NEM programme has been briefed extensively to RAF personnel already and we are not going to repeat all the detail here (please go to our website for the detail www.
raf-ff.org.uk) but it’s worth highlighting that NEM represents the most thorough review of Service personnel terms and conditions of service in a generation. It covers four broad areas of policy: Terms of Service; Accommodation; Training and Education; and Value and Reward.
It will take a detailed look at the many aspects of personnel policy and aims to help achieve the required levels of recruitment and retention, while offering families more choice about their lifestyle and the opportunity for more stability than now. In turn, this may help reduce the impact of the issues we all
6 Envoy Summer 2013
associate with military family mobility, such as children’s education and employment for spouses.
One of the strands of work within the programme likely to attract most interest is the provision of accommodation. At the consultation launch, it was made very clear that there is no intention to do away with the provision of subsidised accommodation. The work underway is, however, likely to result in a modernised and simplified grading process, based on national standards, and changes (in other words, increases) to accommodation charges, based on civilian housing market rates but nevertheless, still discounted.
The intention is to improve the quality of housing as well but this will take scarce money and time. There will also be further help and encouragement to get on the housing ladder, with changes likely to the size of loans available and, potentially, early access to pensions. Your views on accommodation will be particularly important in developing the detail of this work, so get online and complete the survey or send your views via the NEM Mailbox perstrg-NEM-
Mailbox@mod.uk
The other strand of work in which everyone will be especially interested is on Pay and Allowances and your views will again be especially welcome. On pay, the outline proposal is that it will remain rank-based but some of the current anomalies will be resolved, making the system easier to understand and administer. There will be changes to Specialist Pay and Commitment Incentives to help achieve the right impact on recruitment and retention as well. Allowances will be simplified, probably blobbing at least some of them together to make the process of knowing what to claim, when a lot less
confusing than now. And on CEA, although not a direct part of the consultation, there will be study to see how the education of children of Service families based in UK might be improved and reliance on the Allowance reduced.
The bottom line is that if you don’t comment, you can’t complain that you have not been listened to! You can access all the details and the consultation via our own website:
www.raf-ff.org.uk or via the defence intranet.
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