UK — Second tranche of Armed Forces redundancies announced

The Armed Forces are today announc­ing the fields from which they will select those to be made redun­dant in Tranche 2 of the Armed Forces Redun­dan­cy Pro­gramme.

Sol­diers parade through Dews­bury [Pic­ture: Mark Owens, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011] Source: Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

Plans to reduce the size of the Army by 7,000 per­son­nel and both the Navy and RAF by 5,000 per­son­nel by 2015 in order to ensure our Armed Forces are suf­fi­cient­ly flex­i­ble and adapt­able to meet the demands of an uncer­tain future were announced in the Strate­gic Defence and Secu­ri­ty Review (SDSR) in Octo­ber 2010. 

Some of these reduc­tions are being made through a redun­dan­cy pro­gramme. When look­ing at the bal­ance of Reg­u­lar to Reserve forces, fur­ther reduc­tions were iden­ti­fied in July 2011 for the Reg­u­lar Army, tak­ing them to around 82,000 by 2020. 

This sec­ond tranche will con­sist of up to 400 mem­bers of the Naval Ser­vice, up to 2,900 mem­bers of the Army and up to 900 mem­bers of the Roy­al Air Force. 

This will be the last major tranche for the Navy and the RAF who will be able to achieve the remain­ing reduc­tions through oth­er man­ning levers such as slow­ing down recruit­ing and not replac­ing those who leave. 

Defence Sec­re­tary Philip Ham­mond said: 

“Dif­fi­cult deci­sions had to be tak­en in the SDSR to deal with the vast black hole in the MOD bud­get. The size of the fis­cal deficit we inher­it­ed left us no choice but to reduce the size of the Armed Forces — while recon­fig­ur­ing them to ensure they remain agile, adapt­able and effective. 

“As we con­tin­ue with the redun­dan­cy process we will ensure we retain the capa­bil­i­ties that our Armed Forces will require to meet the chal­lenges of the future. The redun­dan­cy pro­gramme will not impact adverse­ly on the cur­rent oper­a­tions in Afghanistan, where our Armed Forces con­tin­ue to fight so brave­ly on this country’s behalf.” 

“As we con­tin­ue with the redun­dan­cy process we will ensure we retain the capa­bil­i­ties that our Armed Forces will require to meet the chal­lenges of the future.”
Philip Hammond

No-one who is prepar­ing for, deployed on, or recov­er­ing from such oper­a­tions on the day that redun­dan­cy notices are issued will be made redun­dant unless they have volunteered. 

No per­son­nel who are med­ical­ly down­grad­ed will leave the Armed Forces through redundancy. 

Med­ical­ly-down­grad­ed per­son­nel are not dis­charged until they have reached a point in their recov­ery where leav­ing the Armed Forces is the right deci­sion, how­ev­er long it takes. 

Those who are assessed as being per­ma­nent­ly below the lev­el of fit­ness required to remain in the Forces will not be con­sid­ered for redun­dan­cy, and will instead leave through the med­ical dis­charge route at the appro­pri­ate stage in their recovery. 

Last Sep­tem­ber 2,860 Ser­vice per­son­nel were noti­fied that they had been select­ed in the first tranche of redun­dan­cies. This includ­ed 1,020 from the Roy­al Navy, 920 from the Army and 920 from the Roy­al Air Force. 62 per cent of those select­ed had applied to be made redundant. 

NOTE: THE FIGURES ANNOUNCED TODAY ARE NOT NEW OR FURTHER REDUCTIONS 

Press release
Min­istry of Defence, UK 

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