The Ministry of Defence has pushed back its target for expanding the UK’s cadet forces by 30% from 2030 to 2035, while confirming that the funding required to support the planned increase has yet to be finalised, the department has said.
The change was disclosed in a written parliamentary answer to Conservative MP Stuart Anderson, who asked the Defence Secretary what target had been set for the size of the cadet forces by 2030 and what funding had been allocated to achieve it.
Veterans and People Minister Calvin Bailey said the original target came from the Strategic Defence Review published in June 2025. He said: “The Strategic Defence Review, published in June 2025, recommended that MOD should expand in-school and community-based Cadet Forces across the country by 30% by 2030. This timeline has recently been re-set in the Defence Investment Plan to 2035 as one of the measures required to increase the rate of Armed Forces transformation.”
The MOD currently supports just over 137,000 cadets alongside around 28,000 adult volunteers. Bailey said achieving the planned 30% expansion would mean recruiting around 40,000 additional cadets, taking the overall number to roughly 177,000, while also requiring a substantial increase in the number of adults supporting cadet units.
He said: “There are currently just over 137,000 cadets supported by 28,000 adult volunteers. An increase of 30% in cadet numbers equates to an additional 40,000 cadets, an expansion that would also require approximately 8,000 more adult volunteers. Details of the funding necessary to support this level of growth are yet to be finalised.”
The department is therefore working towards an expansion of both cadet numbers and the volunteer workforce needed to support them, but has not yet set out the final financial requirement for delivering the programme. On the figures provided by the minister, the adult volunteer population would need to rise from around 28,000 to approximately 36,000 if the planned increase is delivered.
Bailey said work was already underway on how the expansion would be carried out. “Work is currently underway to set the foundations for sustainable growth and to determine how the 30% increase in cadet numbers will be delivered.”
The MOD is also preparing a new Cadet Action Plan, which Bailey said would be announced in October during the first National Cadets Week. The plan will cover both cadets and the adults who support them, including recruitment, retention and the resources available to individual units.
Bailey said: “And we are developing a new Cadet Action Plan, to be announced in October during the first National Cadets Week. The Plan will focus on modernising the cadet experience, providing an attractive offer to retain and recruit adult volunteers, and ensuring that cadets and volunteers have the right resources and support.”
Hi folks hope all is well.
It would be an achievement to increase all three areas of defence personnel including reserves. Again this would mean an increase in the overall defence budget, which appers to be in a bad place with Healey holding the purse strings and making a gesture of leaving the Defence Minister post, now Chancellor. We are constantly informed of the threat of Russia, and now a new threat from Argentina over the Falklands islands, apparently a national televised event is going to happen tomorrow evening(Thursday 3rd September). That should be interesting? Nonetheless, if we can see the potential dangers why doesn’t the government. This self harm is beginning to show, even the public can see that defence is at the top of the agenda where it wasn’t so much a few years ago.
Cheers
George
This is the article I’m referring about Argentina. GB News.
Javier Milei is set to address Argentina over its “sacred” claim to the Falkland Islands following renewed questions over Washington’s position on the British territory.
The Argentine President will deliver a national address at 9pm local time on Thursday focused on what Buenos Aires calls the “Malvinas question”.
Cheers
George
This is short term thinking and I’m afraid another error. The cost is peanuts in the grand scheme of things and creates a massive goodwill to the forces
Ridiculously short term given how long it will take for the outputs to be felt in recruitment and engagement.
What are they saving by pushing this back? Almost nothing.
You have to despair when even the cheap and simple things are not being done!
I’ll be honest: Probably not really. A staggeringly small percentage of regulars are ex-Cadets (I think my phase 1 intake of 120 recruits had like 3). It’s a youth engagment project far more than a defence project.
All this is about to change. The Treasury has a momentary blind spot as the likelihood of conscription looms large.
Conscription will never happen, as there is a segment of society who would refuse to go, and as ever it will be the white working class boys being used as the cannon fodder! Try to bring in conscription and you will see the reality of our so called diverse nation, and it will cause chaos on the streets!
Definately. The new ‘Brits’ will never get mobalised in a million years. There’s at least 10 million that will be on the first plane out of the country as soon as the mobalisation letter lands on the mat
What a surprise. Yet another “promise” not delivered.
Can kicked, no longer their problem, moving on.
I mentioned money to Mauritius on another article, here’s a further example.
The U.K. is seriously committed to it’s defence. Discuss.
How many volunteer to be Cadet Instructors? They want paying for giving their time and perhaps the offer is just not good enough to sustain the children that would want to join the cadets.
In Millom, Cumbria, their ‘drill hall’ is appalling – built over 100 years ago and sadly lacking in many aspects – the Instructors make a good fist of it but then they struggle with the 4 rugby clubs, 2 football clubs and two cricket clubs that all want youngsters!
Millom for children is like a place from a long time ago, but the Sellafield and BAEs salaries mean that they are pushed to work in nuclear rather than Forces; having said that, bonkers load of Veterans who always parade every year at the cross.
How do you crack that because Whitehaven, Workington Barrow, Ulverston are all the same?
And now as a Cadet instructor you have the added occupational risk of being put on full blast by a failed National Guard Major.
I remember we turfed the Cadets out of the Brampton Cadet house once for an exercise, well maintained but definitely a relic of a bygone era. Reminded me of the forrestry schools I went to as a kid, but unlike those this was surrounded by very modern developments.
Another change of priorities from HMG..
Of course not as cadets are a low priority, so much so they get removed from their training camps in order to allow hundreds of foreign sex offenders and illegal scum to move in and bathe in the lap of tax payer luxuries!
You may not remember the Falkland War but the very same youth you describe cheered at TV shop windows as the British success built up, I know I saw it with my own eyes. Conscription without a good reason would be widely resisted but if our towns and cities were subject to Russian drones, the mood swing would be towards defending the country.