Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Answer of 25 July 2023 to Question 194671, what his Department's recruitment targets for the armed forces are for 2024-25.

Recruitment targets for Regular Serving personnel in 2024-25 currently are summarised below:

Royal Navy

Officers 450

Sailors 2,864

Army

Officers 677

Soldiers 9,800

Royal Air Force

Officers 462

Aviators 2,615

In my answers to Questions 7264, 8358, 12118 and 17290, I incorrectly stated that there were no recruitment targets for officers.

I have therefore provided below the historic Army recruitment targets for officers, as contained within the Recruiting Partnering Project (RPP) Demand Plan. The Plan reflects the number of personnel that Capita are directed to recruit annually. The figures include Direct Entrants and Professionally Qualified Officers.

The RPP started in 2012. Please note that data pre-dating 2014 could not be accessed in the time available.

In relation to the question asking for the target for recruitment of officers into the British Army for each of the first three quarters in the 2023-24 financial year; please note that OF in-year targets are based on the intakes to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), of which there are three a year. The following reflects the target by intake, rather than quarter.

Data is sourced from Army Recruiting and Initial Training Command and reflect single Service estimates.