One of the key challenges Major White will face in his new role as Commanding Officer will be tackling the criticisms of the Regiment raised during a recent review.

British Army officials were left unimpressed with the Regiment?s chain of command, training, and the standard of its equipment after a ?Fitness for Role? exercise last November.

They were, however, impressed with other aspects including morale, weapons handling, and shooting range safety.

Their report was included within a wider review of the whole Regiment conducted by the Defence Board, which examined manning, structure and training issues.

Governor and Commander in Chief of the Regiment Sir John Vereker received this review last week, having commissioned it a year ago, and pledged yesterday that its findings will eventually be made public.

He revealed that the review advocated implementing all the recommendations made by the British team and said he would carefully consider this along with Home Affairs Minister Randy Horton and the Regiment.

Although the Governor had previously refused to comment on the report, he pledged: ?It is my intention to place the review in the public domain when all of us involved are in a position to respond to it.?

And he added: ?Implementation of those recommendations that we agree to take forward, in order to ensure that the Regiment is better equipped and trained for its mission, will be a key task for the new Commanding Officer.?

Major White said: ?The Defence Review was in general very positive about the Regiment, its mission and roles, professionalism and capability. It did, however, highlight some areas for improvement, both in terms of equipment and training issues. These areas are being examined in detail by the Regiment and where corrective action is required internally these actions are already being put in place.?

He added that he would be working with the Defence Board, Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, the Defence Department and Police Commissioner George Jackson to address the issues that were not wholly within the control of the Regiment.

Despite the criticisms, outgoing Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lamb maintained that the review findings had not cast a cloud over the Regiment.

?The review was really just a snapshot of where the Regiment was and didn?t identify anything that we didn?t already know,? he said. ?There are areas that we knew we had to concentrate on. We knew that the kit issues, such as our ageing fleet of vehicles, signals equipment and boat engines needed to be addressed. We have not had an injection of capital for some time. Command and control is an issue because we have officers coming and going but there were no significantly detrimental issues. It?s good for any organisation to reflect on itself.?