25%+ cut in allowances!

[iRaven]

PVR (or RET!) is safe at 50% until Apr 12. Here's a more reader friendly version of the cuts...

KEY POINTS:

• The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) set out a requirement to reduce expenditure on Service and Civil Service allowances amounting to some £300M per year. Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, Andrew Robathan, today announced the package of measures to be implemented for the Armed Forces.

• Except where specifically stated these changes will take effect from 1 May 2011.

Annex A – At-a-glance summary of changes

Subsistence Allowances

Day Subsistence (DS) - reduced from 1 May 11
- UK DS reduced from £26.28 to £25 per day
- Overseas DS reduced by 4.9%

Incidental Expenses (IE) - removed from 1 May 11
- except for personnel who are hospitalised

Food and Incidentals Allowance (FIA) - reduced & eligibility change from 1 May 11
- Reduced from £12.41 to £8.50 per day
- Personnel accommodated within 3 miles of their unit's messing facility will be ineligible

Special Messing Allowance (SMA) - rate calculation changes from 1 May 11
- SMA will be set at 75% (set against the Overseas Subsistence Allowance for each country)

Travel Allowances

Motor Mileage Allowance (MMA)

Reduced/removed from 1 May 11 - MMA Private Car Rate and MMA Converted Leave Rate to be aligned with the lower HMRC approved mileage rate, currently 25p per mile

Removed from 1 May 11 - MMA Official Duty Rate (MMA (ODR)) removed from regulations

Privately Arranged Passage (PAP) - reduced & elements of formula removed from 1 May 11
- PAP refunds based on pre-booked non-flexible economy class air fares only, with accommodation and subsistence elements removed from the formula 1 May 11

School Children's Visits (SCV) - reduced from 1 May 11
- Parental Contribution to SCV increased from 50 to 100 miles per single journey. Allowance withdrawn post A-levels.

Home to Duty Travel (HDT) - reduced Personal contribution increased from:
1-3 miles from 1 May 11
3-6 miles from 1 Apr 12
6-9 miles from 1 Apr 13

Separation allowances

Get You Home (Travel) (GYH(T)) - reduced to 25p per mile (from 26p for GYH(T) and 31p for other GYH rates) from 1 May 11

Get You Home (Early Years) (GYH(EY)) and GYH(EY(Overseas Assistance)) - restricted - to be removed on the commencement of Phase 2 Training or at the age of 18, whichever is later, from 1 May 11

Get You Home (Seagoers) (GYS(S)) - will be reduced from a maximum of 12 to 10 journeys per leave year from 1 May 11

Location Allowances

Local Overseas Allowance (LOA)

13 level rank based LOA Factor Plan reduced to 3 bands, LOA convention of 9 paid hotel nights reduced to 6 - from 1 May 11

Exercise/Field Conditions rate of LOA reduced from 50% to 40% of the Single/Married Unaccompanied Full Rate - from 1 May 11

Temporary Assignment and Seagoing LOA rates reduced from 75% to 60% of Single/Married Unaccompanied Full Rate - from 1 May 11

Other LOA conventions revised to more closely reflect current lifestyles, and removal of elements covered by other provisions - from 1 Apr 12

Living Out Supplement to LOA (LOSLOA) - calculation method replaced & eligibility change from 1 May 11

Daily rates of LOS replaced with adjusted Food and Incidentals Allowance rates.
Personnel accommodated within 3 miles of their Unit messing facility will be ineligible for LOSLOA. LOSLOA recipients will no longer pay the Daily Food Charge

Recruitment and Retention Allowance (London) (RRA(L)) - restricted from 1 Apr 12
- Allowance removed from OR5s and above including all commissioned ranks 1 Apr 12

Relocation Allowances

Disturbance Allowance (DA) - reduced from 1 May 11
- All rates reduced by 10%, child element reduced by 51%: New rates will be - SFA £966, SLA £83, Child Element £75.

Education

Continuity of Education Allowances - changes to eligibility, governance and rules
- Changes already announced in Dec 10, effective from 1 Apr 11

Pay

Specialist Pay Reserve Banding

Specialist Pay Reserve Banding (RB) reduced from 6 to 3 year system - from 1 Apr 12

Premature Voluntary Release (PVR) rate of specialist pay reduced from 50% to 0% - from 1 Apr 12

Commitment Bonus (CB) reduced by 50% for new entrant ORs - from 20 Jan 11

Financial Incentive Schemes (FIS)
FIS such as Golden Hellos to ensure there remains a requirement - to be reviewed

[Canadian Break]

Check out the cuts in LOA. If you are in Germany then when the reduction last summer is added to the reduction imposed today your LOA will have reduced by some 75%. Eye watering stuff!

[humpndump]

FP

With the new rules regarding specialist pay, if someone PVRs/RETs, are they still expecting people to carry out that duty unpaid?? I can't say I would.




HnD

[Mr C Hinecap]

are they still expecting people to carry out that duty unpaid??

Still paid - just not the flying allowance?

[ghostnav]

Had there been a cut of 25% across the board, I could have accepted the argument that savings need to be made. But looking at the arguments put forward for some of the cuts, this is nothing more than a bad excuse.

LOA - the UK is so more expensive now with the increases in VAT, fuel etc. Where was the support when VAT in Germany went up 3%, when the euro increased prices overnight; hey its more expensive overseas too - even now!!!

Cut IE - easy when you are in the UK - try doing the same thing for nothing when you are across a border in Europe! It costs.

Why have 3 rates of LOA? Why not just have one!

So SP is now going to be cut IN the tour you have to do on the ground! Bye!!

Those serving overseas on behalf of UK PLC are taking the cut. Now, let's see what cuts are being made on MP visits overseas??

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Prior to this announcement a mate was telling me, if I understood it correctly, that if you are on the lower rate of flying pay, when you PVR you then go to 50% of that pay band. Whereas, those on the middle and upper rates either stay on the middle rate or drop to the middle rate. Is this correct? If so, this announcement seems a bit unclear. It would appear that with the increase in civil aviation market activity it could leave us short on aircrew.

[minigundiplomat]

Prior to this announcement a mate was telling me, if I understood it correctly, that if you are on the lower rate of flying pay, when you PVR you then go to 50% of that pay band. Whereas, those on the middle and upper rates either stay on the middle rate or drop to the middle rate. Is this correct? If so, this announcement seems a bit unclear. It would appear that with the increase in civil aviation market activity it could leave us short on aircrew.

It is my understanding that after today, all who PVR will receive zero FP.

[rock34]

Personally, I think it's better than expected. Could have been far worse.

[Party Animal]

Speaking as someone who is about to take a massive hit from 1 May -

Hitting the public sector where it hurts both in financial and redundancy terms could be easier to understand if it really did help to prevent UK plc from going to the wall. If we really are staring bankruptcy in the face, then fair enough.

However,

We are told by our political leadership that our economy is dire and cuts are essential to stop the ship sinking. When anyone asks why then, have we been able to increase our overseas aid money by a huge margin?, the answer is that we are still the 4th richest economy in the world and relatively 'stinking rich' so of course it beholds us to give increases to China??, India!! and every other corrupt African nation that uses our taxpayers money to buy new guns for its military juntas etc etc..

Secondly and as mentioned by RP above, it seems our 'public sector' is a variable feast. So if MMA is a set rate, this should be across every government department equally. Not the case now with UK MOD LOA rates being completely different to the FCO (as an example) and of course the MP pigs with noses in allowances troughs saying one thing and doing another.

WTF over?

[Mach the Knife]

So, this little lot should make the manning reduction task easier. The message is very clear to me; if unsuccessful when volunteering for redundancy, get your PVR in ASAP to be out before 2012. It will be very interesting to see how many volunteers there are for redundancy now the civil market is showing some green shoots. The tricky bit will be stemming the flow; I predict a haemorrhage of pilots and engineers in quite a short timescale. In many crew room visits I have made recently the only ones not openly stating intent to leave when they could were the Sqn Boss and the very junior guys who did not yet have enough hours for a CPL/IR; and they were doing what they could to get them! Sadly this won’t worry the current posters, they’ll have been posted by the time the muck really hits the fan.

[Lockstock]

I look forward to the FRI in 2013 then..!

[rock34]

Lots of people within this military side of the forum are coming out with comments such as 'airline recruiting is starting up' and 'aircrew will be leaving by the bus load and walking into airline jobs' etc etc.

A quick look in one of the recruiting forums comes up with this quote, "This market is dead for several years (10 years at least)! Have you seen the number of unemployed pilots flooding this market?? airlines have enough pilots for the next 20 years".

Do you believe that these jobs will soon be out there or is it a good healthy dose of optimism / bravado? Genuine question - it's not going to affect me, just curious!

[dallas]

As a bizjet manager we're recruiting, but very cautiously and selectively, cherry-picking the people with the quals we want. We're regularly approached by ab initios and some old sweats with many of the former willing to 'work for food' with the hope of a TR in the longer term. Experience is hard to find, but it's civvy experience that's most useful to us, enabling people to become productive in short order - 2000hrs on Tornados or even VC10 just wouldn't get an interview.

[Brewers Droop]

Personally, I think its better than expected

Rock 34

Not from my overseas vantage its not. For us, this is a big LOA cut on top of....a big LOA cut. But its not just LOA, add in the other cuts and its looking pretty gloomy on the financial side here. Add in changes outside the allowances and its not a pretty picture. There are some great opportunities overseas but the positives versus negatives have just slid a long way into the red.

What is disapointing is most of us have had full size goal posts not just moved mid tour, but sold and replaced with 5-a-side ones.

[Uncle Ginsters]

Rock,
Is that why BALPA reps are on TV giving interviews explaining that the market is in trouble because no ab initio guys can afford the £100k that it costs to self-fund an ATPL these days - that quote is PPRuNe tosh of the highest order, and i have that from the airline HR horse's mouth.

[Tilt&Gain]

Can I clear up the RB thing for all:

From Apr 2012 all those posted to a non flying or flying-related post will get full FP for 2 years, 50% in year 3 and nothing thereafter.

At present, about 95% of aircrew ground appointments are classed as 'Flying-related' - so they attract FP at the full rate, for the entire time in post. This change might look bad if you do not know the whole picture but it will not affect many of us at all.

For those few that undertake a tour in a non-flying related post will have to make sure they move on within 2 years - which is the norm already.

While I agree some of the cuts are pretty depressing it is not worth getting wrapped around the axle over the RB thing.

[rock34]

Fully understand that BD, but I do believe that we all could have been worse off. Obviously there are going to be those who lose out more.

Uncle, If that's the case then good luck to those that try it out. I genuinely hope that people don't make a snap decision and get severely disappointed.

[Lima Juliet]

Tilt&Gain

No so sure you're correct there fella:

From Apr 2012 all those posted to a non flying or flying-related post will get full FP for 2 years, 50% in year 3 and nothing thereafter

Here is what the regulations say about reserve bands:

For the first 6 years away from an SP or SP-Related posts, a Reserve Band will be paid. For the first 3 years, at 100% full rate
(in exceptional circumstances cases may be submitted to extend entitlement to retain full rates beyond the first 3 years). 75% of
the full rate in the 4th year, 50% of the full rate in the 5th year and 25% of the full rate in the 6th year. Payment will then cease (at
this point the individual would have been away from an SP or SP-related post for 6 years). Personnel who submit PVR will be
placed on the 50% rate or remain on the 25% rate if already in payment.

Now the latest announcement says:

Specialist Pay Reserve Banding

Specialist Pay Reserve Banding (RB) reduced from 6 to 3 year system - from 1 Apr 12

Premature Voluntary Release (PVR) rate of specialist pay reduced from 50% to 0% - from 1 Apr 12

So I would expect the new regulations on 1 Apr 12 to read something like:

For the first 3 years away from an SP or SP-Related posts, a Reserve Band will be paid. For the first 2 years, at 100% full rate. 50% of
the full rate in the 3rd year. Payment will then cease after year 4 (at this point the individual would have been away from an SP or SP-related post for 4 years). Personnel who submit PVR will cease to receive SP at that point until exit.

A big difference to what you stated. The SP-Related posts are still good for 'resetting the clock' as far as I'm aware.

LJ

[Farfrompuken]

PVR and SP

Okay, so I read it that if I PVR before 1 Apr 12, I'll get 50% SP until my exit date, PVR after that date, I get zip.

Or do you have to be out the service by 1 Apr 12 to avoid the extra hit?

[Tilt&Gain]

LJ,

Isn't that exactly what I said?

Year 1: 100%
Year 2: 100%
Year 3: 50%
Year 4+: 0%

I only discussed the issue when not in a flying or flying related post - nothing about clocks resetting as this implies you are in an SP post, therefore entitled to full SP.

I dsidn't discuss PVR as I thought it was fairly self-evident: You press the button, SP disappears. It is a retention incentive after all and if the Service are not retaining you then why should it be paid?