Quality of Life report


Life in the RAF - a report for the AFPRB At its simplest, our strategy is to:


• Deliver on operations. • Grow our front-line. • Focus on our people.


The RAF Strategy 2017 uIntroduction


The Royal Air Force is as busy now as it has been in a generation. With the flexibility and utility of air power recognised both politically and strategically, the current stresses of contingent operations for many squadrons, force elements and personnel offer little respite from the challenges of front line, operational service, or indeed the training requirement to meet these tasks world-wide. And there is a ‘knock on effect’ of the rigours and significant demands being placed on our personnel and their families.


At the forefront is the requirement to sustain (and in some areas grow) front line capabilities within a pressurised, affordable defence budget.


In order to remain resilient and retain personnel across a multi-specialised and


technical force, a competitive, perceptive and fair offer is essential for our personnel and their families. The MoD People Programme and work by the Future Manning Team at HQ Air, amongst others, is attempting to address many of the People issues across defence but many of these initiatives are constrained by budgetary pressures and many are some way from being delivered. Furthermore, anecdotally and as a generalisation, we would say that personnel (and more so their families) know little about these potentially far-reaching initiatives and this is reflected in many of the comments we received in response to this survey.


uCapturing the evidence


We are grateful to the circa 1.5k RAF personnel and their families who responded to the survey during a window of only 6 weeks and for the 5,000-plus comments and opinions provided - on line, during our unit visits and at our many other forums and workshops. We have included some examples of these to provide a flavour of the themes. We have sub-divided the body of the report into serving (68% of the replies) and non- serving (32% of the replies) to allow easier assessment and comparison. The evidence we have captured is not statistically derived, nor is it intended to be; AFCAS and FAMCAS do that. What our survey represents is a snapshot of how those across the ranks and their families view their own current RAF ‘lived experience’. That said, our survey results by and large reflect the FAMCAS/AFCAS 2016 outcomes.


www.raf-ff.org.uk


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Image: An RAF Corporal (Cpl) Engineer, (Circus 4) preparing an aircraft for the next training sortie with a formal Circus see off. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.


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