Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many service complaints submitted by (a) serving and (b) former service personnel and received by a specified officer three months after the event have been ruled in time in each year since 2015.

The Ministry of Defence’s guidance for Service and civilian personnel on the application of policy for Service Complaints can be found in Joint Service Publication (JSP) 831: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jsp-831-redress-of-individual-grievances-service-complaints

A Service Complaint cannot be ruled admissible after three months from the date of the issue being complained about, barring certain exceptions. The circumstances under which complaints can be ruled admissible after three months are set out in JSP 831.

The reasons for the admissibility of a complaint are not recorded centrally and could only be determined by examining each case file. The exercise required to review the case file for each Service Complaint within scope would incur disproportionate cost.