I understand that the extortionate levy was discontinued early last year and that messes will now let out rooms for a "nominal fee", i.e. to cover their costs.
Though I haven't checked all the messes, Bentley Priory was about £8 per night when I visited there. Rooms are only given to casual off duty visitors on a first-come-first-served basis, and only when their is availability surplus to requirements. My understanding of this is that although you can book a room, if the mess suddenly fills up for operational reasons, your booking will be cancelled.
I'll never forget how pleased our commanding officer was to tell us at Cranwell, that wherever we went in the country, we would always have a home from home in any of the Officers' Messes. Whatever the quality of some of them, it's good to see that sense has (apparently) finally prevailed over the B7B rate nonsense which followed contractorisation.
Any PMCs out there care to verify that this is indeed the case for the whole RAF now?? And do the Sgts Messes run the same system?