Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average length of service was for personnel leaving the armed forces who were recruited from the Commonwealth, by branch, in each of the last five years.

The average Length of Service¹ for UK Regular² personnel with Commonwealth nationality³, by branch, who outflowed⁴ in each of the last five years is shown in the table below:

Caveats/Notes:

1. Length of service has been calculated using entry date. There are known problems with the entry date information extracted from Joint Personnel Administration (JPA). If personnel have transferred from one Service to another Service, have served under an alternative assignment type (e.g. Reserve Forces), are re-entrants or have transferred from Other Ranks to Officers, their entry date may correspond to any of these events. The resulting LoS may reflect their current period of service, include previous service, or it may be the time that has elapsed since they first joined the Armed Forces, irrespective of any break in service. It will invariably include time spent on untrained strength. Length of Service (Years) is calculated as full years of service completed on outflow. LOS on outflow can be affected by the relative size of intake in previous years, particularly in small populations, therefore the average LOS can vary due to past intake.
2. UK Regulars comprise Full time Service personnel, including Nursing Services, but excluding Full Time Reserve Service (FTRS) personnel, Gurkhas, mobilised Reservists, Military Provost Guard Service (MPGS), Locally Engaged Personnel (LEP), Non Regular Permanent Staff (NRPS), High Readiness Reserve (HRR) and Expeditionary Forces Institute (EFI) personnel. Unless otherwise stated, includes trained and untrained personnel
3. The Commonwealth grouping includes all personnel with a nationality, as recorded on JPA at the time of publication, that is reported in the British Nationality Act 1981, SCHEDULE 3 (Countries Whose Citizens are Commonwealth Citizens), further information of which is available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/61/schedule/3. On the 12th November 2015, under the British Nationality (The Gambia) Order 2015, the Gambia was omitted from the Commonwealth. Figures relating to personnel with a nationality, as recorded on JPA, of Gambian are still included in the Irish and Commonwealth grouping. For further information see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1771/contents/made
4. Outflow is derived by month-on-month comparisons of strength. These figures include outflow to civil life and outflow to other non-serving and serving parts of the Armed Forces, excluding the UK Regular Forces. Personnel flowing from the Trained to the Untrained Strengths are not captured in this table.
5. Army would normally only provide Direct Entry (DE) Officer figures for Length of Service (LOS) queries, however the above Officer figures include both Direct (DE) and Late (LE) Entry personnel. DE and LE Officers have different career paths. The inclusion of LE in the overall figure could mean in theory that the average LOS for those Officers at rank of Lt Col and below is lower than if analysing DE only. The LOS for LE Officers has known data quality issues as the fields from which we draw our data are inconsistent and sometimes reflects the Officer only LOS and sometime both the Soldier and Officer LOS combined.