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Network of reserve training sites and cadet huts in managed decline, according to MoD.

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• Public Accounts Committee

Government lacks a realistic and appropriately funded plan to achieve its ambition of expanding the reserve forces and the cadets. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), in its report on the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) oversight of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations (RFCAs), warns that the MoD’s targets for expansion of reserves and cadets face significant barriers and suffer from a lack of clarity. 

The reserves are a key part of the UK’s defence capability, making up a little under a fifth of its total armed forces strength at the start of 2025. Ambitious plans were laid out for expanding the role of the reserves in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), including increasing active reserve forces by at least 20% “when funding allows”. According to the SDR this would “most likely” be by the 2030s – however, the MoD recognised to the PAC’s inquiry that investment would need to come in support of the reserves during this Parliament, so within the next 4 years. The MoD is also seeking as a priority to improve reserves’ management via a digital solution by early 2027 – a tight timescale to meet.   

The report also covers the cadet forces, which the SDR wants to increase (currently 140,000) by 30% by 2030, aspiring to reach 250,000 cadets in the longer term. Cadet forces can enhance social mobility and give confidence and structure to the most disadvantaged young people, and the PAC’s inquiry heard that there was no lack of interest from young people wanting to join the cadets. However, the MoD is still working out how to address the shortage of adult volunteers who run the cadets, and the PAC believes it will require considerable effort to persuade young people to volunteer as cadets in such significantly increased numbers. 

The PAC’s report is calling for the full enhancement and expansion plans for the reserves and cadets to be set out by 2026. 

The enhanced roles of the reserves and cadets will also need to be supported by a modernised and fit-for-purpose volunteer estate of training sites and cadet huts. However, the PAC’s report finds that the estate has been in a state of managed decline, with too many sites (around 2,500), some of which are not in the right places. The MoD has begun a programme to dispose of some sites and consolidate others into super reserve centres, but has not yet secured future funding for this work while facing teething problems with an estate maintenance contract. The PAC’s report calls for MoD to give due consideration to the volunteer estate in forthcoming investment decisions. 

Overall, the PAC finds inadequate arrangements for monitoring the financial performance of the RFCAs, which received £146m of public money in 2023-24. October 2024 saw a batch of three annual accounts published together, meaning that some information about the RFCAs' financial performance was not publicly available until more than four years after it had occurred. An overall financial framework that complies with Treasury requirements is still not in place, and the PAC is calling for one to be implemented as a matter of urgency. 

Chair comment

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was greeted with great celebration from the top of government. It is of course welcome to see the high-level commitments to spending on our defence contained within it. What we still do not have, following an unacceptably long delay in proper scrutiny of defence spending through the lack of publication of an Equipment Plan, are granular details on specifically how these ambitions will be funded and delivered. This includes the lack of clarity our Committee has found around highly ambitious plans to expand our reserve and cadet forces. 

“Our inquiry has found that the MoD will need to find funding in this Parliament to begin its massive 20% expansion of the reserves, rather than the SDR’s anticipation of some point in the 2030s. Similarly, the planned boost of the cadet forces by a third by 2030 will stumble if the lack of adult volunteers is not addressed. This is before one begins to grapple with the considerable challenge of persuading young people to join up in the numbers required. Our Committee welcomes the government’s aims. The reserves are the very grassroots of our armed forces and the cadets offer young people valuable life skills and opportunities. The managed decline of the infrastructure that supports them shows they are in sore need of attention. But as we have frequently found in scrutiny of this government, what is missing is a plan for how these aims will be achieved.”