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PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Army (23 November 2017)

Question Asked

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many (a) officers and (b) soldiers there were in the British Army in each year since 2000.

Asked by:
Mr Toby Perkins (Labour)

Answer

The officer and soldier strengths of the Army at 1 April for each year since 2000 are shown below:

Army Full Time Strength

Officers

Soldiers

2000

14,130

100,050

2001

14,320

99,670

2002

14,550

100,240

2003

14,940

102,340

2004

15,180

102,030

2005

15,040

98,370

2006

15,130

96,750

2007

15,100

95,620

2008

15,090

94,620

2009

14,930

96,370

2010

15,020

98,340

2011

15,020

95,460

2012

14,660

93,560

2013

14,060

89,280

2014

13,360

80,840

2015

13,000

77,020

2016

12,790

75,240

2017

12,910

73,870

Future Reserves 2020 Strength

Officers

Soldiers

2012

4,300

21,690

2013

4,300

20,940

2014

4,350

19,230

2015

4,490

20,940

2016

4,840

23,830

2017

5,100

24,840

Notes:

1. Numbers are for trained and untrained personnel and have been produced by Defence Statistics.

  1. Full time strength in the above tables includes the trained element which contributes to the liability. e.g. it includes Gurkhas but it excludes Full Time Reserve Service (FTRS) Home Commitment (HC) and those FTRS serving on Operational Commitment Establishment (Reserve). As such these may differ from published statistics.

3. The Future Reserves 2020 population consists of Group A Army Reserves, some Sponsored Reserves and those personnel serving on FTRS(HC) contracts who were previously Army Reservists. Ministry of Defence does not hold Future Reserves 2020 population data pre – 2012.

4. Figures have been rounded to 10, numbers ending in "5" have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias.


Answered by:
Dame Harriett Baldwin (Conservative)
4 December 2017

Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.