Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what metrics are used to assess the efficiency of the Army recruitment system; and what estimate he has made of the most recent assessment of the efficiency of the Army recruitment system.

The efficiency of the British Army Recruitment pipeline is constantly measured on a daily, weekly and monthly basis through various key performance indicators (KPI) throughout the recruitment process to the end of basic training.

These KPIs vary depending on stage of the process but make assessments based on numbers of registrations, Army briefings and their effectiveness, questionnaires, assessment centre attendance, individual career discussions and the success, fail, defer and conversion rates of basic training.

The assessment process has recently helped enhance areas of the recruitment system including an improved and updated website and candidate portal, digitised collection of the primary health care records (PHCR) and the implementation of AI to scrutinise each PHCR.

The British Army has a continuous early initiative to seek improvements of the process and system.