The Ministry of Defence has revealed stark challenges in recruitment and retention within the Armed Forces, with Defence Secretary John Healey acknowledging the scale of the problem during a session with the Defence Committee.
Healey confirmed that for the past year, the Armed Forces have been losing 300 more full-time personnel each month than they have been recruiting.
“Recruitment targets were set and missed every year; in the last year, service morale fell to record lows,” said Healey. “Over the last year, our forces were losing 300 more full-time personnel than were joining, every month.”
Healey described the situation as the result of “deep-set problems” that have developed over the past 14 years. While emphasising that reversing these trends will take time, he outlined several initial measures taken by the new government to address the crisis.
The Secretary of State highlighted the government’s recent initiatives, including awarding the largest pay increase for the Armed Forces in over 20 years and ensuring all personnel earn at least the national living wage. Additionally, targeted retention payments have been introduced for tri-service aircraft engineers and soldiers at private and lance corporal ranks with over four years of service.
“Having put in the investment and got these skilled, trained personnel, we want to hang on to them,” Healey explained.
The government also extended childcare provision for personnel serving overseas, which Healey said would benefit around 2,700 individuals. He acknowledged the critical role families play in influencing retention, adding that “the feelings of the families who stand with and support personnel” are often decisive factors in whether personnel stay or leave.
Healey admitted that the MOD has struggled to streamline the recruitment process, with many applicants abandoning their applications due to delays. He revealed that over the past decade, more than a million young people applied to join the Armed Forces, but over three-quarters gave up before reaching the point of acceptance or rejection.
“We have swept away some of the historical restrictions on people joining,” said Healey, adding that the MOD has introduced a new cyber recruitment pathway and set turnaround targets to ensure faster responses to applicants.
Ian Roome MP raised concerns about delays in medical assessments and the role of contractor Capita in prolonging recruitment times. Healey responded candidly: “We are some way off at the moment, but that is the purpose of setting targets. If we do not [respond faster], we lose good people, who will go elsewhere, especially in a tight labour market.”
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Magowan added that the Armed Forces recruitment programme will undergo a significant overhaul by 2027, with a fully digitised pipeline expected to resolve many of the current issues.
“The heart of the problem is that it is often not easy to track where [applicants] are,” Magowan said. “This digitisation will greatly improve what you just said and help us to meet those targets.”
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No one wants to be part of a decaying organisation. Cuts, cuts, cuts have an effect on morale across the services (JHC personnel not likely to hang around after Puma cuts). That service chiefs don’t get this is astonishing!
That’s before asking the question of why serve for a country whose leaders seem hell bent on destroying its fabric!
Yep.
Funny how this government relates to every problem in this country to the last 14 years of Tory government. Whilst they have done their fair share of damage to UK forces I’d say this has been from poor mismanagement over the last 30 years, both Tory and Labour. This country desperately needs to boost its forces now before it’s too late. I keep reading headlines from the government are ready to meet Russian forces in Europe if necessary but with what?
UK governments never take the military seriously until a major conflict happens and get caught with our pants down, always saying ‘ we should have seen the warning signs and built our defence up way before’….hindsight is our governments only ‘power’
U.K. government – cut defence budget, cut capabilities , make it hard to join and let’s not care about those who leave , muck up buying weapons and other things
Also U.K. government- why are we struggling with recruitment and retention, why do we not have enough of things 😭🙄
No problem they are cutting equipment to suit 😈
Why serve when can not get spares, not much works. Whole Regts are with out Arty (AS90/MLRS) so soldiers stand about doing nothing. Every thing is old, run down and units are under strength, housing is poor as are single soldiers barracks. Forever on exercise playing soldiers but few if any operational depolyments. Soldiers are bored, poorly paid, and ever other day they see cuts and more cuts, top brass are out of touch with reality.
No big surprise then is it.
Get a feeling this is orchestrated? I have for a few years.
I totally agree, they,re traitors.
Pure sophistry and where ‘over the last 14 years’ might be appropriate, here, clearly it is not.
Labour should tell the truth and their times in office over the last 39ish years and set the record straight as well as rebutting some accusations with facts; the above is clap trap by Healey.
Healey is not sugar coating anything here. He is telling it like it is. He should gat at least some credit for that. Proof of the pudding though is if he can fix these manifold problems and very quickly.
Recruiting is only half the problem. And that is to large degree self inflicted! Crapita one big issue, and the RAF by blatantly and illegally discriminating to meet woke quotas.
Who would want to remain n a military that is in steep decline?
How attractive does trying to build a career look when all that’s ever reported is cuts and reductions?
The risk of war is at the highest for many decades yet our preparedness is at an all time low. Why stay and be ill equipped to survive a coming war?
It is well known service accommodation is poor.
Is it really hard to grasp why we have these problems? It seems obvious to me!
Agree need to make the offer better: Pay, housing, training, housing, families, opportunities post service. The article also states many applicants do not get processed by recruitment within a reasonable time.
ARE YOU GOING TO RECRUIT WHITE PEOPLE NOW, MR HEALEY?
A few years ago in the RAF they were a lot less keen.
When CGS took his new post months back, the first photograph taken of him meeting staff at Andover was in front of the D,E&I section.
How about trying the opposite and going after white working class lads who might want to “shoot shit up”
and a bit less on the DEI side?
Speaking as someone who served in Fleet Air Arm when we had three aircraft carriers east of Suez, not alongside the wall in Pompey all the time, yes, I am that old 80 years. The services have too many posts of all services filled by civilians the result being those posts, are no longer valuable down time after operations. But hey ho the employment figures are great for the local MP, and he/she is only interested in the jobs created for more civilians in their constituency. I was told once that the Fleet Air Arm had 90,000 personnel in 1959 makes one wonder how the government think 70,000 is enough for the Army today.
Hiya Micky
I think as the small boats land we should give each one the King’s shilling, six weeks training to complement the training they’ve had in their own countries and ship them off to the Ostfront, we should have enough of the Mohammadans to make a small army group, £3 billion for as long as it takes, it won’t take long. 😎
To all our politicans who are hard of understanding this is what failure looks like. We al realise that you as a political class are absolutely useless at everything. However this is different this is defence of the realm. This is your primary repsonsibility. You are obligated to do something to fix this. But to do this this it will require more resources NOW. You’re going to need to park some of your other “nice to have” priorities and fix this.
In the current international situation allowing this to continue is reckless. The risk of conflict is increasing. The impact of a potential conflict is heightened due to the chronic hollowing out of of defence over a prolonged period. In short not only will our military currently struggle to defend the country they will have difficulties even to defend themselves. If you put foreign aid, Net Zero and rainbow Police Cars before before carrying out your primary responsibility as a government not only should you lose office you should go to jail.
You look at the army and they are rolling around in antique equipment. I know much is promised or in the pipeline but that’s not much use or fun for those serving now. I consider myself lucky to have served when we were still considered to be a credible force. The kit was decent but the accommodation both as a singerly or married pad was poor especially in the UK, BOAR was different and much better. We also used to have some good medical services and rehabilitation centres, do we have any military hospitals now? As for rehabilitation if it wasn’t for the great British public dipping their hands into their pockets for those various charities those boys and girls would be stuffed waiting for their needs to be tended to. I’m sick of politicians who seem happy to promise everything but deliver nothing.
PS… Also those Chiefs of Staffs and heads of the Armed Forces who toed the government line when ever there were cuts, coming out with that old line ‘Leaner and Fitter’ they were also part if the problem just thinking of those pensions.
True. I joined the army in 1975 and left in 2009. The army is still operating kit from before the time I joined!
Similar time line but your extensive career far outdid mine, kudos sir. A lot of our kit is 30+ years old now, not as reliable and do they still have 1st line REME and the spares to solve the problems in the field?
Would it be viable to expand the Gurkha model into other branches of the armed services to help fill the gap? Perhaps have a small air and naval academy in Brunei for training purposes and linking with deployments in the Indo Pacific region.
…and how about MoD ending the current inexplicable pause on recruiting Commonwealth applicants.
I’m not surprised considering the accommodation situation, inadequate pay, and how Veterans are treated.