The Ministry of Defence has significantly reduced the time it takes for new recruits to join the UK Armed Forces and is implementing further reforms to streamline the process, according to a written response published on 30 April 2025.
Responding to a question from Ian Roome MP (Liberal Democrat – North Devon), Defence Minister Luke Pollard acknowledged historic challenges in recruitment but stated that the Government is actively reversing the trend.
“The Government inherited a crisis in recruitment and we are focused on improving Armed Forces recruitment,” he said.
Pollard confirmed that the median time for a candidate to complete the recruitment process and enter service has been reduced from a peak of 475 days in 2022 to 290 days in 2024 — a 39% decrease. He added that all three Services are continuing to explore ways to reduce these times further.
To accelerate the process and make the armed forces more accessible to prospective candidates, the Ministry has introduced new recruitment benchmarks. “Recent policies have included setting an ambition to make a conditional offer of employment to candidates within 10 days, and a provisional training start date within 30 days if they desire it,” Pollard said.
These measures are part of a broader reform initiative to create a more responsive and efficient Armed Forces Recruitment Service. The planned service aims to ensure that “highly motivated and capable people can join our Armed Forces” more quickly and with fewer administrative hurdles.
The updates follow continued scrutiny over delays, inefficiencies, and dropout rates within the UK’s military recruitment system, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent years.
Median time to complete the recruitment process has been reduced to 290days!!! It was 475 days!!!!
How on earth does the ministry of defence expect to recruit people if the process is taking 10 months!!!!
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Needs to get below 100 days. That’s over 3 months, more than enough for security checks, etc.
When I joined the biggest gap wasn’t the security checks, it was waiting for a training slot to open. Applied in January, had my initial look at life in Feb/March, went to my assessment in April, basically walked out of the assessment with a tick very good, and told very shortly after that I was hired. But still had to wait until October until I could start phase 1.
Need to get recruitment time down to something like civil times – 60-80days.
I would say 6-8 days is achievable. Clearly there may be some ongoing checks going on. But get on with basic training etc. with the basic checks done should not cause an issue.