Providing a 21st century training environment

The rationalisation of the Defence Training Estate (DTE) in April 2006 brought together the training facilities of all three Services, making the organisation an efficient and responsive one fit for the needs of Defence in the 21st century.

The idea of a unified Defence Training Estate for all three Services has its origins in the Army Training Estate created in 2003. At the time the estate was managed locally but there was a growing need for a unified and holistic approach, with the potential for increased efficiencies and a better service to customers.

The Commander of DTE, Colonel Mark Waring, explains:

"The journey started with the Army realising that the management of the Army Training Estate was fractured and was being maintained and run in a suboptimal way.

"There became a need to put it all together into one single co-ordinated organisation and it was then that the Army Training Estate was formed.

"It was realised that was a sensible model to follow and that it should potentially be rolled out across Defence. That led us on this journey to bring the entire training estate under one organisation."

The process started in earnest last year. This year the remaining training land in Great Britain has transferred to DTE along with the facilities in Northern Ireland and Germany. Phase three, now in full flight, is bringing together sites across the rest of the world under the umbrella of DTE.

The most notable addition is the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) in Canada which, at 2,690 square kilometres, has doubled the size of the Defence Training Estate literally overnight. See Related News >>>

Training facilities in Kenya will fall under DTE as of 1 September 2009 with those in Belize to follow in the near future.

The rationale behind the move has been to improve visibility of costs, efficiency of use and decision-making and to enable the adoption of best practice for safety and sustainability.

It has also facilitated the creation of new training environments to prepare our servicemen and women adequately for current operating environments such as Afghanistan:

"The training estate we inherited was primarily developed during the Cold War and consisted of urban facilities oriented towards Northern Ireland and Eastern Europe rather than Afghanistan," Col Waring continued.

"But over the last 12 months there has been a rapid sea change and now there is a growing capital works programme to provide the facilities needed to train and prepare for current operations in Afghanistan.

"The work for this started at STANTA [Stanford Training Area] in DTE East with the building of an Afghan village and supporting infrastructure that has created a world-class facility to prepare our people for operations in Afghanistan."

See Related News for more on the new Afghan village at STANTA >>>

STANTA was the first training area designed specifically to prepare troops for Afghanistan, but as Col Waring explains it will not be the only such facility:

"Work is now ongoing across DTE Salisbury Plain in three phases that will provide similar facilities: forward operating bases, Afghan compounds and counter-IED [improvised explosive device] lanes.

"There are plans for similar facilities in DTE South East at Lydd and Hythe, Sennelager in Germany as well as Kenya, and also to build on an already existing contemporary operating environment in Canada.

"So gradually in the last 12 months the DTE is becoming more fit for purpose to meet the Army and Defence’s intent to prepare our people for Afghanistan."

However, as the estate has grown and changed to offer these new facilities, so have the associated issues of safety and the environment. Much of the training estate is inhospitable and remote land protected from development due to its location and use.

Paradoxically, the use for defence training and the protection from outside incursion has led to many areas also becoming a haven for wildlife; DTE is now responsible for over 170 sites of Special Scientific Interest, 40 Special Protection Areas, and more than 25 wetlands of international importance, not to mention 700 Scheduled Archaeological Monuments.

With such responsibilities has come the need to work with many outside agencies and interests and for Col Waring the unified DTE has allowed this to happen more successfully:

"One of the most important roles of DTE, through its partnership with Landmarc [a private contractor], is to maintain very close relationships with all authorities, land owners and interested bodies on and next to our estate.

"In order to provide the ability for our people to train on the training areas it is vital for our commanders and people to maintain goodwill with all the interested parties that allow us to do that. Being one unified body allows us to do this more successfully and build up expertise.

"It occupies an awful lot of our time and effort but it is vital to our work. Building relationships means everyone is happy for us to continue to train."

Recent high profile issues have included the renewal of the licence to train on Dartmoor and participating in the South Downs National Park public consultation process. In Germany, a major project with German authorities is underway to record and preserve places of natural and cultural interest across 18,000 hectares of the Defence Training Estate. See Related News >>>

Working with the public and the pressure for access to the land also brings with it concerns over safety - an issue never far from Col Waring's mind, whether that be the safety of the surrounding population or the troops on exercise:

"My prime responsibility above anything else is to deliver a safe place to train," Col Waring says.

"A comprehensive network of audits and inspections ensures all our training areas and ranges are operated in a safe manner and we are now beginning to find mechanisms to overcome a number of growing threats to safe training such as urbanisation in DTE Home Counties and the desire for ever more access to open spaces.

"In addition, the impacts of new equipment, different types of training and new demands are putting ever increasing strain on our safety officers - but we are now in a position to respond."

Col Waring believes that since the DTE came together great strides have been made in responding to the needs of training for Afghan operations, maintaining safety records and incorporating new areas, and all this has been done while increasing efficiency:

"When the DTE formed, the target was set to deliver three million man-training days a year. Through the new arrangements, though without any extra money, we are delivering over 4.8 million man-training days per year.

"That has been achieved because we are able to manage it in a much more strategic way for all three Services."

Despite the progress, Col Waring is not complacent and is aware that more can and must be done if UK troops are to have the training facilities they require to prepare them for current operations:

"I think we are still on a journey and have many more responsibilities to absorb. But we have a much clearer overview across the entire piece due to the creation of the DTE," he said.

"We have a clearer understanding of the use and condition of our training estate and by bringing it all together we are now able to deliver real value for money. Whilst the estate is as busy as ever, training activity has changed dramatically to meet the demands of current operations. This requires new facilities such as Afghan-type compounds.

"We are doing a pretty good job but we can't be complacent because things are changing all the time and we must respond to demand."