Covid-19: UK mobilises reserves to assist civilian agencies

A drive to mobilise up to 3,000 reserve personnel to help assist civilian agencies with the Covid-19 pandemic has been approved by UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.

UK military personnel delivering boxes of PPE face masks to St Thomas Hospital in London on 24 March. (MoD Crown Copyright)

The ‘intelligent mobilisation’ of reservists across the British Army, Royal Navy (RN), and Royal Air Force was announced on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) website on 1 April as part of a drive to create a pool of specialist personnel who can work with the National Health Service (NHS) and other civilian emergency services.

An MoD spokesperson said on 1 April that the aim was to have the first personnel mobilised within five days ready to deploy across the UK. This latest tranche of reservists would be in addition to the 20,000 regular and reserve personnel allocated to the MoD’s Covid-19 Support Force, which stood up on 19 March as part of Operation ‘Rescript’.

The call-up excludes reservists who work in the NHS or are designated as key workers in the food supply chain, police, local councils, or the defence industry.

Major General Simon Brooks-Ward, Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Reserves and Cadets), said in a letter dated 31 March announcing the mobilisation, “We expect reservists to help deliver a range of defence outputs, including support to the NHS and other key tasks: liaison officer roles; the provision of specialist skills; reinforcement of regional points of command, to enable their 24/7 operation and resilience; and to support the implementation of contingency plans developed by other departments.”

He said the situation was “dynamic” and it was not yet possible to say how long the mobilisation would be for but that it would be at least six months.