According to reports from the National Audit Office, a new website designed to streamline the recruitment process has cost over THREE TIMES the initial estimate and is 52 months late!
By the end of this year, troop numbers were supposed to have reached just under 83,000 as part of a controversial contract with Capita worth nearly £500m over a 10-year period.
Instead, there’s just over 76,000 troops.
Capita has said that it is confident that it can catch up and meet its recruitment targets before the end of the contract in 2022.
Many people within the armed forces community have balked at the sentiment that seems to be pushed across in many of the military adverts which have been shown on social media and TV.
Equally, a significant number within the armed forces community have questioned how a civilian company can relate to and thus ‘promote’ the many reasons as to why men and women decide to join the armed forces.
For me personally, I joined the armed forces aged 16 but not because of any advert that I saw.
My desire to join came off of the back of the documentary ‘HMS Brilliant’ that was shown in the 90’s.
But it would seem now that the armed forces might be ‘missing a trick’ and instead of paying tens-of-millions to a civilian company, they might have been better off commissioning some sort of documentary (perhaps hosted by Ross Kemp!?) in order to really catch the ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ that appeals to many who join the forces.
We perhaps should also not forget the outrageous ‘witch hunt’ that many Veterans have been subjected to, after returning from war zones which this country sent them off to fight in.
If the media and the political establishment got behind our troops more instead of hanging them out to dry, then perhaps more people would be inclined to join up.
Some of my best years were spent serving in the armed forces.
But I have not seen one advert in the past 5 years that has captured and projected anything related to what made my years serving such a memorable experience.
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