Recent answers from Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard MP have revealed detailed insights into the training budgets of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force from FY2018-19 to FY2023-24.
These figures highlight trends in spending on Phase 1 (basic training) and Phase 2 (initial training) for each service, illustrating significant investment growth in several areas.
The detailed training budgets for each branch of the Armed Forces are summarised below:
Royal Navy
| Year | Budget (£M) |
|---|---|
| FY2018-19 | 23.783 |
| FY2019-20 | 21.989 |
| FY2020-21 | 25.198 |
| FY2021-22 | 64.984 |
| FY2022-23 | 101.330 |
| FY2023-24 | 112.128 |
The Royal Navy’s training budget has seen the most dramatic growth, surging from £23.783 million in FY2018-19 to £112.128 million in FY2023-24.
British Army
| Year | Budget (£M) |
|---|---|
| FY2018-19 | 90.998 |
| FY2019-20 | 95.057 |
| FY2020-21 | 93.499 |
| FY2021-22 | 91.225 |
| FY2022-23 | 98.883 |
| FY2023-24 | 104.749 |
The British Army’s budget has seen steadier increases, rising from £90.998 million in FY2018-19 to £104.749 million in FY2023-24.
Royal Air Force Training Budgets
| Year | Budget (£M) |
|---|---|
| FY2018-19 | 55.482 |
| FY2019-20 | 73.274 |
| FY2020-21 | 65.237 |
| FY2021-22 | 70.998 |
| FY2022-23 | 66.007 |
| FY2023-24 | 86.206 |
The Royal Air Force’s training budget has also grown, increasing from £55.482 million in FY2018-19 to £86.206 million in FY2023-24.
A cost per head would be useful. The Army cost per head would work out to be quite small.
If we’re spending more on training, might it be a faint hope that we’ll start spending more on other things, too, e.g. growing the size of our forces?
Appalling article.
Where is your information sourced?
What is the justification for the spend ?
Have you considered prior to this article why the training is expanded?
Poor journalism imo.
Pollard answered a similar written question (9115) from Neil Shastri-Hurst on October 22 and gave a very different answer, reversing the numbers for the RN and the RAF.
Sorry, the above was meant to be a main post not a reply.
My reply to you was that these numbers were given as written answers on Monday to three separate questions by Derek Twigg requesting the figures back to 2010. Parliamentary answers can be found with a quick search on parliament.uk. The government didn’t justify the spend nor did Mr Twigg ask for it, so it’s a bit hard for Lisa to report it. What would you like her to do?
The numbers for earlier years were not given – with Pollard claiming it wasn’t possible due to standard financial practice in all public and private organisations. I don’t believe that at all. You legally must keep records for at least six years — it is not “standard financial practice” to destroy or embargo the information afterwards, especially in the public sector.
Are you trackng the defence challenges to the UK from Putin and Co ? If so I am surprised that you need to ask this question.
So are planning to continue be beaten by farmers in flip flops or peer states next year then.
I’d suggest that some (and I do say some not all) of those ‘increases’ are nothing more than increases in costs.