Newly released figures reveal that voluntary outflow remains the leading cause of personnel leaving the UK Armed Forces, with 8,105 trained personnel opting to leave service in the 12 months leading up to March 2024.
The data, provided in response to written questions by Labour MP Shaun Davies, shows a consistent upward trend in voluntary outflow over the last five years. According to Al Carns, Minister for Veterans, this category remains the largest driver of departures, highlighting challenges for retention across the Armed Forces:
| 12 Months Ending | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voluntary Outflow | 7,375 | 5,268 | 5,978 | 8,405 | 8,101 |
| Total Outflow | 11,795 | 8,649 | 10,610 | 13,465 | 13,275 |
Driving Factors Behind Voluntary Outflow
The Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey (AFCAS) 2024 identifies the top three factors contributing to the rise in voluntary departures:
- The impact of service life on family and personal life, including frequent relocations and prolonged time away from home.
- Opportunities outside the military, particularly in the civilian job market, which often offer higher salaries and better work-life balance.
- Pay concerns, with many personnel expressing dissatisfaction amid rising living costs.
Minister Carns commented: “The MOD continuously evaluates retention strategies to address these concerns and provide personnel with improved support to remain in service.”
While overall outflow numbers remain within historical norms, the MOD recently acknowledged a concerning imbalance: approximately 300 more personnel are leaving each month than joining.
The sustained increase in voluntary outflow—from 5,268 in 2021 to over 8,000 in both 2023 and 2024—reflects significant challenges for retention. This trend, coupled with other departures such as time expiry and medical discharges, places further pressure on recruitment efforts and operational readiness.
Retention efforts remain a priority for the Ministry of Defence, with initiatives aimed at improving pay structures, family support, and career progression opportunities to reduce the appeal of leaving for civilian roles.
The full datasets and survey findings can be accessed through the Quarterly Service Personnel Statistics and AFCAS 2024 reports available on gov.uk.
Does the report provide a bit more detail such as:
Trade group, Time Served / Rank, Marital Status to name but a few.
We saw previously that MOD were paying retention bonuses for certain pinch point trades., but details of time served would be a big indicator.
It may also be as a result of Pension changes. IIRC those on the “post AFP75” don’t immediately get a pension after 17/22 years. ( Happy to be corrected if I have that wrong). If correct, then it may be a big influence on those who have perhaps already served 15+ years. Under AFP75, most hung on till the 22 year point, even if not happy, as the financial loss would mostly outweigh any benefits of leaving.
It might be interesting to also not how getting married affects “outflow”. Given the current star of forces housing and peoples aspirations in regards to en-suites, spouse’s working etc, that moving into a rundown, damp house with NO decent job prospects for the “other half”, play a big part.
It is happening across the Western world. Some countries doing better than others, but the hard reality is that young people in the West have no interest in military service – for a variety of reasons.
… like the last days of the Roman empire, hiring mercenaries may be a main alternative. … perhaps the British army should consider replacing most (all?) of its light infantry with Gurkhas. May be part of the answer.
OK the Gurkhas are a bit more than that?
I think you’re wrong Roy. I see plenty of young people join but very few stay the distance. A combination of poor working patterns, a declining state of equipment and poor progression prospects.
Instead of focusing on retention, maybe another question should be, how long does it take to join the armed forces? Does it take longer to join up as the application is done by a private company? I’m sure the initial application was quicker when the forces did it themselves.
Joe, The Continuous Attitude Survey completed by a good number of serving personnel naturally is an indicator of factors affecting retention or otherwise.
Recruiting is another matter and there is data elsewhere about how long it takes to join up with Capita at the helm. Some ‘old hands’ talk of having gone through the application process and then starting basic training in a matter of a few short months. It is well known that the process with Capita can easily take well over a year.
Conscription gives countries the ability to force fit young people to serve for short periods. A proportion may be given the opportunity to stay in the forces and build a longer term career. This approach doesn’t work for roles requiring years long training- eg fast jet pilots, engineering specialists. The problem that an all professional force causes is the difficulty of matching conscription’s ability to deliver sufficient numbers for the shorter term roles. ( We have more than enough admirals, generals, air marshals etc)
Obviously, for both types of role, the remuneration package as a whole has to be competitive. Equally important, recruitment needs to be far quicker.
At present I believe the minimum service period is 4 years, depending on length of training. Is that too inflexible? Would a shorter commitment, as available in the US, be attractive to potential recruits?
Peter, despite Sunak’s belated interest in conscriptiojn in the dying months of his regime, we have only ever commenced conscription in a World War when we needed to expand the army to several million.
Minimum service period for the army, I think is still 4 years for ORs. It used to be 3 years. 4 years (including Ph 1 and 2 training) is not a long time. Much less and there would be poor return on investment.
I’m leaving because the Forces have lost their way. I wanted to join and stay in an organisation that valued me and the team. Too many Officers jumping on the woke bandwagon and alienating the core pool of people we traditionally recruited from. The Armed Forces no longer represents what working class males want.
Horace, The officers are forced to jump on the woke bandwagon. It is Policy….imposed by the politicians.
It was apparent when I served 56/78 that service personnel were unhappy not only with pay, state of married a occomodation and long overseas tours away from family. When I left I was approached by an officer to sign on. I would have if he could guarantee I’d be remaining at my last unit for a period of four to five years as I’d just bought my house and the children would have completed their education and found employment and remained in our house. After that I would leave as I’d have reached an age when I’d been able to get employment as a civilian. He just brushes it aside so that was the end of interview. It seems as though service personnel today feel they are not appreciated and the woke attitude by senior officers are not a place in today’s armed forces.
John, the reason the officer brushed aside your ‘demand’ was that he could not agree to it. You knew that folk get posted every 2-3 years, unless they were in certain roles in BAOR (Germany), ie tankies or heavy artillery bods etc
Promotion is generally poor, accommodation is awful in a lot of places and you aren’t really valued.
Honestly the worst thing about being in the army now is Manning, regiments are smashed with taskings leaving no one in the sub units to do the work that needs done ie trucks , comms, guard ect the same blokes get smashed all the time. 21 SP on parade last week and that’s the most I’ve seen all year. And then all the top corridor care about is their next SJAR/OJAR.
They treat you as disposable. Promotion not always done on merits but on their ability to replace your role. If you got injured they know how to not pay you compensation. No sense of community. And that why people leaving in droves.
Blokes are getting snapped too early in there careers if it was BOAR and everyone was on the piss you’d be like fair one kick the dossers our but we are dealing with post Afghanistan and Iraq with lots of people with experience and problems and new generation issues and the pay hasn’t kept up you can read through my previous comments like I’ve said the stupid bastards through us at every strike going at one point and the savvy managers turned around to us and recruited us for more money and the only person to blame for that is his majesty’s government