Wannabe soldiers are ditching their dreams because the recruitment process is so complicated and slow, with 116,300 giving up or failing Army policy standards last year.
The process, overseen by private contractor Capita, takes five months – and the Army is now more than 7,000 below its 82,000 target.
Ex-Labour Defence Minister Kevan Jones blames the mess on the Ministry of Defence outsourcing recruitment to Capita in a ten-year, £1.3billion partnership project.
He said: “It takes so long to go through that many people just give up. This disastrous contract needs to be ended and Capita sacked.”
The deal with Capita was signed in 2012 but it has failed to meet recruitment targets every single year.
MoD figures show in 2014-15, 79,000 dropped out, with 77,000 the following year and 120,000 in 2016-17. In 2017-18 80,000 withdrew.
Defence Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan admitted the main reason was them “voluntarily disengaging from the process”.
The National Audit Office found that 47 per cent of people voluntarily left the recruitment process against 42% for failing policy standards (mainly medical) following an audit in 2017.
A Capita spokesman said the time between starting an application and getting a training date had fallen from 205 days in 2017-18 to 159 days.
They insisted things were improving, also pointing out “increases in application and enlistment numbers”.
The spokesman said: "The Army and Capita vowed to turnaround the Recruiting Partnering Project.
"Considerable increases in application and enlistment numbers, as well as significant reductions to the time it takes for applicants to receive a job offer, are among the evidence that the turnaround has been achieved – and ahead of schedule.
“2018/19 saw the highest number of applicants for two years, which will inevitably lead to a higher number applicants not meeting the Army standard.
"We have worked hard to improve the ‘conversion ratio’ of applicants who enlist, including helping marginal candidates get fit enough to pass the tough tests needed to join.
"As a result, there has been a one-fifth reduction in the applicants who withdraw or are removed from the process.”
