Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many qualified and experienced personnel positions are (a) required and (b) vacant in (i) Type 23 and (ii) Type 45 ship crews.

The information requested, as at 11 June 2018, is shown below.

All numbers over 100 are rounded to the nearest 10 with numbers ending in five rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to avoid bias. Numbers under 100 are rounded to the nearest five.

None of the existing vacancies is in a post categorised as safety critical and no ship would go to sea without the minimum required complement of suitably qualified and experienced personnel.

The figures are a snapshot taken from the Joint Personnel Administration System and are accurate as of 11 June 2018. It should be noted that the number of vacant positions can fluctuate on a given day and do not reflect any future plans to fill, i.e. if a person was given an Assignment Order to fill a gap at any time in the future, including the day after the report was processed, the post will still show as a gap.

The number of Required Positions (workforce required as of today) for a RN ship fluctuates depending on the operational tasking, readiness state or when in refit.