Parachute Regiment: Recruitment

(asked on 12th December 2023) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 11 December 2023 to Question 5463 on Army: Recruitment, how long does the British Army intend to continue the internal transfer bounty for the Parachute Regiment.


Answered by
Andrew Murrison Portrait
Andrew Murrison
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This question was answered on 20th December 2023

The internal transfer bounty for the Parachute Regiment has been in place since 15 November 2023 and will be in place until 31 March 2025 or until the allocated number of bounties have been taken up. Since 15 November, one person has completed training and 12 are in training to pass selection in the new year.

£150,000 has been budgeted in financial year 2023-24 to pay for these bounties.

The below table shows the strength of the Parachute Regiment between 2010-23. I am however withholding the workforce requirement as disclosure would be likely to prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of the British Army.

Year as at 01 April 2023

Total Strength

2010

2,290

2011

2,220

2012

2,250

2013

2,280

2014

2,200

2015

2,220

2016

2,200

2017

2,290

2018

2,200

2019

2,230

2020

2,240

2021

2,260

2022

2,110

2023

2,110

Source: Analysis (Army)

Notes/Caveats:

  1. The figures are for the Regular Army only and therefore exclude Gurkhas, Full Time Reserve Service, Mobilised Reserves, Army Reserve and all other Reserves, but include those personnel that have transferred from GURTAM to UKTAP.

  1. Figures include Other Ranks regardless of Training status and Officers who have completed Phase 1 Training. Personnel joining the commissioning course at RMAS are not assigned an Arm/Service until completion of the course and are therefore not included in the above.

  1. Figures have been rounded to 10 though numbers ending in a “5” have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent the systematic bias caused by always rounding numbers upwards. For example, a value of ‘25’ would be rounded down to ‘20’ and a value of ‘15’ would be rounded up to ‘20’.
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