The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that approximately 1,600 military personnel are currently held at readiness to support UK resilience operations, according to a written parliamentary response published on 30 April 2025.
Responding to questions from James Cartlidge MP (Conservative – South Suffolk), Defence Minister Luke Pollard stated that the personnel are designated to support a wide range of civil contingency tasks, from flood response to fuel distribution during shortages.
“The tasks they are attributed to are wide ranging, from support in the instance of flooding (provided by the UK Standby Battalions) to the provision of fuel tanker drivers in the instance of a national shortage (Op ESCALIN),” he said.
Of the 1,600 personnel, 900 are held at what the Minister described as “extremely high readiness” within the UK Standby Battalions, a dedicated force for domestic resilience tasks. This high-readiness role is rotational and currently shared across several Army units, including the infantry, cavalry, Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.
Pollard explained that resilience operations refer to tasks undertaken to assist civil authorities when there is a shortfall in either capacity or specialist skills. These do not include military support for counter-terrorism, which falls under separate arrangements.
“We take resilience tasks to mean operations designed to provide assistance to the civil authorities where there is either a capacity or skillset shortfall, excluding the provision of additional security in the instance of a significant terrorist attack,” he noted.
No wonder recruitment is so low.
Why do you think that? MACA has always been a Army tasking, and there have always been troops earmarked to provide it.
Emoting bloody dustbins is NOT military aid. – it’s taking the piss out of the armed forces and using them as scivvies to clear up the Government mess without paying private companies to get in and do it
The military did not empty dustbins. The military provided some staff support for the wider operation. As you probably know?
Aside from what Daniele said, Military Aid to the Civilian Authority does include back-filling vital services, and yes that includes jumping in when strikes happen. Sometimes it’s more glam, such as when we jumped in to support the olympics, sometimes it’s more mundane, like when we jumped in to drive fuel tankers. Sometimes it’s life saving, like when we fight forest fires or rescue people from floods, and sometimes it’s mundane. But it’s still all MACA and none of it is new.
MACA is of vital importance to the security of the Uk..I simply cannot understand why people will not get national security is multi domain and entirely interconnected..
Security is about many things, water security, food security, energy security, biohealth and public health, transport infrastructure, communication infrastructure, law and a order industrial capacity a country can be attacked through any of these and weakened if any of these fail…
The armed forces have actually always support core infrastructure.. the British army in the 18th and 19th century spent most of its time dealing with UK based issues and were always being called out to beat up striking workers.
Infact one of the things the militia was used for would be to be ready for is any issue that needed manpower. The U.S. essentially still runs this system with the home guard.
It’s very important that the military are able to support civilian services..especially as post war cuts did not just cut UK civil defence it killed it and by 20000 meaningful civil defence structures did not exist in the UK the core agencies have been cut and cut and are no longer able to meaningfully respond to civil emergencies..
It’s actually a very big problem.. infact any return to 3% defence budgets also needs to see a development budge for civil defence.
The Labour Party post 9/11 and swine flu started to redevelop a bit of a civil defence capability.. so as a senior ED nurse I was trained in managing chemical biological and nuclear casualties, we had a decon unit, level A hazmat suits, detection equipment for nuclear contamination, treatment pods for various attacks, as a senior safety and risk manager I was further trained in civil contingencies and incident room management, there were central warehouses of equipment for all types of event, attack and disaster…
But post 2010 it was cut all over again…
If we had proper civil defence structures, with a proper civil defence reserve you could probably drop most of MACA needs, but you cannot get rid of all of it… the military have most of the UK government owned light, medium and heavy lift rotors as well as almost all m government owned off road transport…and the only source of significant manpower that can be available at short notice.
Putting down civil disturbances ?
Hang on, I know what the missing word is.
“Give me an R please Bob”.
Need a national guard, the army shouldn’t be doing this or collecting bins for the Matter.
I don’t believe they collected any bins, they provided logistical expertise. They’re rather good at that.
You do know the National Guard is a fully deployable branch of the US Military right? Our equivalent is the Army Reserve.
Don’t you think our troops should be on our streets stopping police stations from being attacked. Have you not seen the machete carrieing invaders on our streets no one in our community is safe.from. these invaders the whole of Europe is in trouble. This labour government must be throw out .we need proper government to provide protection for our British people