19 The significant reduction in headcount creates a risk that current skills gaps will worsen. There is a significant risk that current skills shortages will worsen particularly as at least 16,000 personnel, 30 per cent of the reduction required, is predicted to occur through natural wastage, a process over which the Department has less control than redundancy. A loss of skills is of less concern for the first military redundancy tranche which has excluded key skills and targeted surplus trades. The Department also takes into account skills when assessing civilian applicants for Voluntary Early Release and has stipulated a small number of specific skills that cannot be released under the Scheme.
20 Despite these efforts, skills gaps may become more acute in future because headcount reductions will be well under way by 2013, with the Royal Navy and RAF redundancies substantially complete. This will be before the detail of the new operating model and the mix of skills required, have been determined. Furthermore, the Department has not yet stipulated the numbers of personnel who will leave individual business areas. These factors make it very problematic for the Department to target headcount reductions to areas deemed less critical although the latter gives the Department some flexibility to target areas as the operating model develops.
21 The Department will struggle to maintain skills through recruitment. The Department has learned from previous headcount reduction programmes and has continued to recruit military personnel, although at much lower levels. The Department is constrained on the civilian side by a government-wide civil service recruitment freeze albeit with some exceptions, for example, business critical posts.