Ministry of Defence
Main Building
Whitehall
London
SW1A 2HB
Ref: FOI2018/XXXXX
XXXXX XXXXXX
Reply to: XXXXX XXXXXX
13 July 2018
Dear XXX XXXXXX,
Thank you for your email of 14 June 2018 requesting the following information:
“I would like to have figures for the last 5 years for numbers of recruits for each service. I would like
this broken down by county across England for each year. For Scotland, Northern Ireland and
Wales I am happy for the information to be given for the whole of each country – I do not require
county breakdown. As well as the absolute numbers e.g. 6000, please could I also have the figures
as a percentage of the local working age population (aged 16-64) for each area.”
I am treating your correspondence as a request for information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOI Act).
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) holds information relating to your request. The data is
presented in the spreadsheets entitled “Regular Intakes in the United Kingdom” which
accompany this letter.
Please note that each Service maintains its own records on recruitment which is why
the spreadsheets are not identical. This is particularly apparant with the Royal Navy /
Royal Marines (RN/RM) where the data is on two sheets. The RN/RM 2017/2018 stats
have been produced on a new system which was implemented last year. You are also
requested to note that the RN/RM do not record recruiting location by county, but by
recruiting office (AFCO) only.
The statistics held the Royal Air Force are only for those applicants who manually
entered a county/country on their application, and these stats do not include candidates
who did not enter a county/country. Further to this, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish
stats are also broken down by county.
Regarding the part of the request for the percentile figures of the local working age
population for each area requested I must inform you that this information is not held.
Under Section 16 of the FOI Act I advise that you may wish to contact the Office of
National Statistics to ascertain whether they have such data.
