Press release

Shaping the future of Defence recruitment

Armed Forces Recruiting Programme working with industry on future recruiting solution.

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

The Ministry of Defence is re-engaging with industry to deliver a tri-service recruiting solution for the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force.

The new solution, which will be in place from 2024, will situate the candidate at the heart of the recruitment process while ensuring that the Armed Forces achieve the right quality and quantity of candidates to satisfy demand while remaining agile and responsive to change.

From today, the Armed Forces Recruiting Programme (AFRP) will begin re-engaging industry as part of the work to develop a solution that attracts between 18,000 and 20,000 people a year to the broad spectrum of jobs on offer across the 3 single services.

A prior information notice has been released on the Defence Sourcing Portal inviting industry to a virtual Market Interest Day to inform them of the current requirements and the commercial construct.

In 2020, AFRP started an initial procurement exercise to source a future provider for the AFRP, however following review it was identified that the process no longer reflected the future needs of defence.

As a result, the opportunity was taken to further refine the requirements and today’s announcement recommences the procurement process.

Updates to this page

Published 4 August 2021