Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average amount of time is that an (a) officer and (b) rating serves in the Royal Navy.

Making the Royal Navy (RN) an attractive and rewarding employer remains of paramount importance. Promoting retention efforts to extend the length of service of our sailors enables the RN to retain its skilled personnel, whose experience, and tradecraft are essential to the organisation.

The table below provides the average length of service on exit by trained RN Personnel (including Royal Marines) between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2023.

Average length of service has been calculated by the length of current service, against the difference between the sailor’s joining and exit dates.