The British armed forces had a trained strength of 136,000 in July 2026, against an official establishment of 153,000 — a shortfall of 17,000 that represents the largest gap between establishment and trained strength recorded since the MoD began publishing comparable figures in 2010. The shortfall is concentrated in the British Army, which is 11,200 below its establishment of 82,000, with the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force each below establishment by approximately 2,900.
The disclosure arrives as the MoD prepares for the end of the ten-year outsourced recruitment contract with Capita, which expires in March 2027. The Capita contract, awarded in 2012 and subsequently extended, has been criticised in multiple NAO and PAC reports for failing to meet recruitment targets, delivering a poor candidate experience, and — in the NAO’s 2018 assessment — contributing to a “significant deterioration” in Army recruitment numbers relative to the contract’s own projections.
What Went Wrong With Capita
The Capita contract transferred responsibility for Army recruitment administration — processing applications, conducting online assessments, managing the early stages of selection — from the Army to a private contractor. The original business case projected annual savings of £267 million over 10 years. The NAO’s final assessment put actual savings at approximately £30 million against projections, with recruitment performance significantly below target in most years of the contract.
The most cited operational failures: an online recruiting system that was unreliable for extended periods in its early years; extended processing times that led candidates to accept employment elsewhere before their application was concluded; and a lack of human contact at critical decision points in the application process that military analysts linked to dropout rates significantly above pre-contract levels.
The In-House Transition
The MoD confirmed in June 2026 that recruitment functions would return in-house from April 2027, operated by a new Army Recruiting and Initial Training Command. The transition plan was reviewed by the NAO, which noted in September 2026 that it carried “material delivery risk” given the compressed timeline, the need to rebuild internal capacity that had atrophied over 10 years, and the concurrent requirement to absorb a large volume of candidate data from Capita’s systems.
Defence Select Committee chair Tobias Ellwood told Exposed News the transition was “long overdue” but warned that the armed forces could not “afford a gap in recruitment performance” during the transition period given existing strength shortfalls and the expanding commitments arising from AUKUS and the Strategic Defence Review.