Royal Navy offering £500 bounty to help boost Navy and Royal Marines recruitment

The Royal Navy is offering a bounty of £500 to personnel who refer a candidate to the service.

The one-off payment is applicable to all servicemen and women in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

The money will be handed over following the candidate's attestation at the New Entry Training Establishment, with those who work in recruitment excluded from the scheme.

• Soldiers offered £7,500 to join British Army's elite Parachute Regiment
• Royal Navy recruitment at its lowest since 2017
• New RAF chief apologises 'unreservedly' for recruitment drive that discriminated against white men

The scheme has been running since October and is expected to last for at least a year.

It comes after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request found Royal Navy recruitment had dropped to its lowest level since 2017.

An FOI is a request to see specific information from any public authority, and the one in question looked at the numbers of other ranks being recruited into the Royal Navy, including the Royal Marines, for the past six years.

The Royal Navy is not the only service offering money to try to get people through the door.

The British Army is offering personnel who switch to serving in the Parachute Regiment a bonus payment of £7,500.

Private ranks are being targeted by the incentive, with personnel from more subscribed sections of the British Army being offered a financial sweetener to transfer.

Reports suggested the payment is unprecedented and an attempt to try to combat a manpower crisis.

However, an Army spokesperson denied this to Forces News, insisting there was no personnel shortage and that such incentives are routine.