The cost of poor military-to-civilian transition among the UK Armed Forces community: Findings from ‘Understanding the Transition from Military to Civilian Life’
Approximately 15,000 individuals leave the Armed Forces each year, with most undergoing a positive transition. However, a minority of ex-Service personnel face adverse outcomes, including unemployment, poor mental health, harmful drinking, homelessness or interactions with the justice system. While research to date has focused on understanding the prevalence of those experiencing difficulties and factors associated with less desirable outcomes, less attention has been paid to understanding the financial cost of post-Service transition challenges.
To address this gap in evidence, recent research from RAND Europe [1], as part of their wider ‘‘Understanding the Transition from Military to Civilian Life’ project with QinetiQ, funded by the Forces in Mind Trust [2], estimated the financial costs of negative transition outcomes for government and the third sector.
Research Aims
The research aimed to provide an updated and transparent estimate of the costs relating to poor transitions from the UK Armed Forces.
The purpose is for this evidence to be used to inform decision makers when assessing potential interventions and help them prioritise options to reduce the prevalence and cost of poor transition outcomes.
Building upon the Transition Costs Model, first developed in 2013 and refined in 2017, to estimate the financial impact of negative transition outcomes in the four years post Service [3,4], this research includes new data sources, changes to the outcomes considered (influenced by data availability), and changes to underlying assumptions on how individuals experience negative outcomes.
Data and Methods
The research draws on publicly available data from the England and Wales Census, the Office for National Statistics, the Ministries of Defence and Justice, King’s Centre for Military Health Research, local government and publicly available academic and grey research to understand both the prevalence of adverse outcomes among Service Leavers and the estimated cost for each individual experiencing these outcomes.
The prevalence of each outcome was multiplied by the cost of each outcome to estimate the total cost of each outcome in each year. As individuals experience outcomes in different ways (e.g. one individual may be unemployed for a few months, another may be experiencing chronic employment and mental health challenges and homelessness), a range of costs for each outcome were included to reflect this.
Key Findings
The total cost of poor transitions from the Armed Forces in 2025 was approximately £258 million, though this could plausibly range between £63 million and £546 million depending on how individuals experience the outcomes (e.g. severity of symptoms, whether they seek help, the type of treatment they receive).1 The forecasts suggest that the annual cost will remain around £250 million out to 2030, unless there are any substantial changes in the number of Service Leavers, policies, or the cost per individual of any outcome.
Criminal offending and harmful drinking are the largest drivers of the overall cost of poor transition, representing 40 per cent and 26 per cent of the cost respectively (Figure 1).2 In contrast, the costs of homelessness and imprisonment represent the lowest costs in the model. The high cost of criminal offending (which is experienced by approximately 6 per cent of Service Leavers) indicates that reducing criminal offending among Service Leavers could save significant money. There is also a disparity between the most expensive and most prevalent issues: mental health challenges are by far the most prevalent outcome with an expected 16,510 Service Leavers (SLs) who left between 2021 and 2025 experiencing a mental health condition in 2025.
Discussion
Difficult transitions continue to present significant financial costs to government and the third sector. However, significant financial savings could be possible through targeted interventions to reduce the prevalence of costly negative outcomes, particularly criminal offending and harmful drinking. Recent years have seen substantial progress in developing and evaluating interventions within the Armed Forces community that could mitigate these negative outcomes .3 However, many interventions and programmes oriented at improving transition outcomes remain unevaluated, and the sector should prioritise evaluating which interventions and programmes work best.
Throughout the process of this research, several areas where information is missing or outdated were identified, which undermines the sector’s ability to have an accurate picture of transition costs and how these could be mitigated. This includes particularly outdated information on drug dependency and financial insecurity, limited evidence on family breakdown, harmful gambling, and physical health, and insufficient understanding of when negative outcomes emerge.
Beyond the outcomes that can be measured, it is important to recognise that there are other potential costs or negative impacts associated with poor transition. For example, while evidence suggests similar employment rates between working-age veterans and civilians, around 40 per cent of veterans may be experiencing underemployment as their jobs do not align with their skills, experience or expected level of seniority.[5,6] This indicates that employment rates alone may not reflect successful or fulfilling transitions and there may be wider economic costs stemming from underemployment among the former-serving community. It is also crucial to recognise that the costs stemming from poor transitions are not strictly attributable to military Service, and that some challenges faced by veterans likely stem from pre-Service experiences or personal circumstances.
Finally, while this research estimated the costs of poor transitions, it is important to reiterate that most Service Leavers make a successful transition to civilian life and face no challenges in this process. Indeed, many veterans derive substantial value from their Service.[7]
Recommendations
- The sector should prioritise robust impact and economic evaluations to understand which interventions and programmes could best help to reduce and mitigate adverse transition outcomes.
- Future research should seek to understand the prevalence of drug dependency, debt and financial insecurity, and family breakdown among Service Leavers as current data is sparse and outdated.
- Future research should seek to understand when Service Leavers experience negative outcomes and the factors that contribute to negative outcomes (including pre-Service, in-Service and post-Service experiences).
- The sector should continue to highlight positive experiences of transition and ensure that while they seek to support Service Leavers experience adverse outcomes, they do not further a narrative that most Service Leavers experience adverse outcomes.
Many thanks to Catherine Galley for writing this Research Spotlight.
1 This cost is the estimated total cost of negative outcomes for all Service Leavers who left between 2021 and 2024 (inclusive). This is approximately £3,500 per Service leaver (72,900 Service Leavers who left between 2021 and 2024, though it is important to note that most of this cost is incurred by a small proportion of Service Leavers.
2 The costs relating to criminal offending and harmful drinking also have the largest uncertainty, which suggests that these costs could be substantially different than shown depending on Service Leavers experience these outcomes (e.g. type of offences they commit, the extent to which harmful drinking impact their life or the treatment they receive).
3 For examples of ongoing research in this area, please see these examples highlighted on the Centre for Evidence Ongoing Research Page [8,9,10] and these recent and ongoing research announcements and publications [11,12,13,14,15,16].
References
1. Galley C and Slapakova L. 2025. The cost of poor military-to-civilian transition among the UK Armed Forces community. Available from: Link
2. Fisher N, Newell K, Smith K, Slapakova . and Galley C. 2025. Understanding the Transition from Military to Civilian Life. Available from: Link
3. The Futures Company. 2013. The Transition Mapping Study. Available from: Link
4. Kantar Futures. 2017. Continue to Work: The Transition Mapping Study. Available from: Link
5. Fisher N, Newell K, Barnes SA, Owen D, Lyonette C. 2021. Longer-Term Employment Outcomes of Ex-Service Personnel. QinetiQ. Available from: Link
6. Flynn M, Ball C. 2020 Understanding Service Leavers Aged 50+: Their Challenges and Experiences in the Civilian Jobs Market. Available from: Link
7. Centre for Evidence for the Armed Forces Community 2025. OUTCOMES Study: The Value of UK Military Service: Exploring Perspectives from the Ex-Forces. Available from: Link
8. Centre for Evidence for the Armed Forces Community Ongoing Research Directory. 2025. ACTIVATE: Efficacy and Cost-effectiveness of a Smartphone-based App to Reduce Harmful Gambling and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptoms Among Veterans. Available from: Link
9. Centre for Evidence for the Armed Forces Community Ongoing Research Directory. 2025. Exploring the Acceptability and Feasibility of Using Virtual Reality to Augment Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Overcome Avoidance Central to Mental Health Presentation in Veterans. Available from: Link
10. Centre for Evidence for the Armed Forces Community Ongoing Research Directory. 2025. A Nature-based Intervention to Improve Mental Health: Efficacy of an Angling Intervention for Military Veterans and Emergency Service Personnel with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Available from: Link
11. Goodson J, Ponder WN, Carbajal J, Cassiello-Robbins C. 2025. Combat Veteran Mental Health Outcomes After Short-Term Counseling Services. J Vet Stud.;11(1):129-141. Available from: Link
12. Battles AR, Curland RA, Cruitt PJ. 2025. A Pilot Evaluation of a Therapeutically Applied Tabletop Role Playing Game Group Therapy Among Veterans. Int J Group Psychother. 1-24. Available from: Link
13. Bridges-Curry Z, Meckes SJ, Fountain C, et al. 2025. Combat exposure, social support, and posttraumatic stress: a longitudinal test of the stress-buffering hypothesis among veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 60:2495-2504. Available from: Link
14. Cardiff University. 2022. UK Researchers Pioneer New Virtual Treatment for PTSD. Available from: Link
15. Provan M, Ahmed Z, Stevens AR, Sardeli AV. 2024. Are equine-assisted services beneficial for military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry. 24:544. Available from: Link
16. Williams J, Heath C, Leightley D, Murphy D, Dymond S 2025. Efficacy and Cost-effectiveness of a Digital Health. Combat Stress. Available from: Link
