Source: The Times
Recruitment delays come as the number of troops could dip below the Ministry of Defence target of 73,000 within months
Tens of thousands of young people are withdrawing their applications to serve in the armed forces every year after waiting months to join, it can be revealed.
Fewer than one in ten of the 137,000 people who applied to join the army, navy and RAF last year ended up serving, with nearly 74,000 potential recruits — 54 per cent — giving up on the process altogether.
The problem was worse in the army, with 70 per cent of potential recruits pulling out before they were through the doors.
More than 8,400 of the 54,128 people who withdrew their applications to join the army waited at least six months before doing so, according to the figures uncovered by John Healey, the shadow defence secretary.
Although 1.1 million young people have applied to join the armed forces since 2014, three in four people withdrew their applications, leaving the Ministry of Defence to sign up just over 132,000 people and reject almost 170,000.
The alarming data comes amid mounting concern that the recruitment crisis engulfing the military is so bad that the Royal Navy does not have enough sailors to man its ships, the RAF is short of pilots and the army could dip below its target force of 73,000 within months.
Countries across the world — including the US, Australia, France and Germany — are suffering from a recruitment and retention crisis, with many military personnel leaving for lucrative private sector jobs.
These figures suggest that young people in the UK do still want to join the armed forces but are not prepared to wait months to do so.
Healey, who uncovered the figures following multiple requests to the government, said there had been a “total failure” by ministers to get a grip on armed forces recruitment.
“Hundreds of thousands of people willing to serve and defend their country have simply given up on their ambitions, while ministers have failed to get to grips with the problems.
“The Conservatives have presided over 14 years of failure in defence — missing their recruitment targets every year, hollowing out our armed forces, and reducing the British Army to its smallest size since Napoleon,” he said.
Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has admitted that the recruitment system is “ludicrous”, saying earlier this month that the “Amazon” generation, which is used to getting things instantly, were not prepared to wait a year to join the army.
Under the present system, young people wait months after expressing their initial interest to actually start training, by which point Shapps said their lives may have moved on. He also said there were medical rules that stopped men and women from joining which needed reform, saying that the health of family members was cited as reasons why they may be rejected.
Army sources said that it currently takes an average of 5.3 months for a potential recruit to start training, which they suggested was not unusual when compared with other jobs.
A Whitehall source said Shapps was already trying to improve the recruitment process as well as retention issues, with more troops leaving than signing up.
“The latest figures show a rise across the board in interest and applications and we need to do all we can to convert those,” said the source, adding that potential recruits were already waiting less time to sign up now than they were a year ago.
They added that Labour was “shouting from the sidelines without putting forward any plausible plan”.
It is understood some of the cases take longer because their medical history requires investigation prior to being cleared fit to join.
Tim Ambler, a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, said the department was “incompetent”, adding: “In an age where young people do not really want to work, they have to be wooed.”
Richard Holroyd, the chief executive of Capita Public Service, which oversees army recruitment, told MPs on the defence select committee earlier this year that the outsourcing firm was “working extremely hard on moving the cycle time, by which I mean the speed at which you go through the process”.
He said that the fact it takes 150 days to join the army means “that some of our potential recruits get attracted elsewhere because there is a speed to get a job that is higher elsewhere”.
One of the major issues is said to be with the medical part of the process, with information checks with GPs and decisions on health problems taking too long. Capita, which faces penalties every time it loses someone, is trying to digitise medical records to speed up the process.
Holroyd also explained that they were “overwhelmed” with Commonwealth applications and the “challenge” was “sorting through the application processes”.
Army sources suggested the fault did not lie entirely with Capita and it was a wider problem with the system.
Healey added that a Labour government would ensure Britain is “better defended”, adding that it would overhaul military recruitment, tackle the “shameful” state of military housing and establish an armed forces commissioner as an independent voice to improve service life. Labour has not said whether it would increase the size of the army.
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: “Recruitment and retention are absolute priorities and we have introduced a range of measures to respond to the current recruitment challenge, which is affecting many other militaries across the world.
“While it does take time to recruit the right people to the military, we have sped up army recruitment by 9 per cent in the last year, reducing the average time it takes for a regular soldier to join to less than 140 days.”
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