Next phase of Armed Forces job cuts begins
Posted - 20/01/2012
More servicemen and women will soon be looking for other security cleared jobs, after the Armed Forces revealed details of their next tranche of job cuts.
It was announced back in October 2010 that 7,000 Army personnel and 5,000 members each from the RAF and Navy would be shed by 2015, with 2,860 Service personnel being notified last September that they had been selected for the first tranche of redundancies.
Now it has been revealed that the next wave of job cuts will see up to 2,900 Army personnel, 400 members of the Navy and 900 from the RAF being made redundant.
This will be the last wave of redundancies for the Navy and RAF, who will achieve the remaining cuts by slowing down recruiting and not replacing departing security cleared staff.
Defence secretary Philip Hammond asserted: "The size of the fiscal deficit we inherited left us no choice but to reduce the size of the Armed Forces, while reconfiguring them to ensure they remain agile, adaptable and effective."
The MOD's budget is set to be reduced by 8% between 2011 and 2015, as part of efforts to tackle the department's £38 billion deficit.