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Armed Forces: Deployment

Answer

Individual Separated Service is currently recorded on the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system. Individual separation is recorded as one of 16 activity codes; these codes allow commanders to identify how much separation is caused by each activity. Data from the system is currently only available to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. The Army, being the last to transfer to JPA, does not yet have sufficient data to provide meaningful statistics. A complete period of data should become available in January 2010. Even with a full cycle of data the system is not configured to identify individual tour intervals for Service personnel. The system is designed to identify where individual harmony guidelines are being broken. The current individual harmony guidelines are:"The Royal Navy guidelines determine that its personnel spend, on average, 60 per cent. of their time deployed and 40 per cent. alongside in their home port during a three year period. The maximum individual threshold (Separated Service) is 660 days away from their normal place of work in the same three year period.""The Army guidelines determine that its soldiers can be deployed for one six month tour in every 30 months (six on 24 off) and during that 30 month period a soldier should not expect to be away from his normal place of work for more than a total of 415 days.""The Royal Air Force guidelines determine that its personnel should not spend more than 28 days in every four months away from their normal place of duty, which allows for a four month operational tour (four on 16 off)."

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

483 c1521W; 237814

Session

2007-08

Subjects

Armed forces Deployment

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk