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Special Forces hopeful rejected over nut allergy calls for review of tight medical restrictions

A Special Forces recruit is calling for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to relax its tight medical restrictions after he passed a series of tough selection tests but was eventually rejected over a nut allergy.

The recruit, who does not want to be named, was rejected in October 2017 after declaring a childhood allergy to peanuts.

He passed a selection board review with “flying colours” but fell at the last hurdle due to his medical condition.

The MoD has strict medical requirements known as JSP 950 that state: “army personnel need to be physically and mentally fit enough to train, serve and fight anywhere in the world.”

On its website it states “Severe allergic reactions or anaphylaxis requiring adrenaline injection” and “Severe nut allergy” under medical conditions that will cause an application to be rejected.

A Special Forces recruit has started a campaign to find others who have been rejected by the army for minor medical conditions. (Right to Fight)
A Special Forces recruit has started a campaign to find others who have been rejected by the army for minor medical conditions. (Right to Fight)

The 28-year-old recruit said that as MoD recruitment numbers fall well below targets, there should be a basis to reconsider tight medical restrictions that put a blanket ban on some recruits entering the British Armed Forces.

He told the Standard that while it is recomended that he carry an Epi-pen he has “never had to use an Epi-pen, ever” for his allergy, which he has managed while hiking the Himalayas and eating food cooked with peanut oil, handling nuts in a bar job, and sitting next to people on airplanes who were eating nuts.

“I have eaten over 30,000 meals without any reaction. I do test positive to a particular food, but it is only in a tightly controlled skin-prick test,” he said.

The recruit’s application to join the Special Forces Reserve was first rejected in October 2017 after he passed an initial review board in which he was told he was “fit and robust, as well as bright and very determined” and he “coped easily with everything.”

He then embarked on a drawn out appeals process but eventually hit a dead end when he was told there were no more appeals channels he could access.

In response, he started the Right to Fight campaign this week, appealing for similar stories from other rejected recruits to put “as much public pressure on the decision makers as possible.”

He said: “I know there are plenty of other people online who I've contacted who are in a similar situation for all sorts of medical reasons like Eczema when they're a child or they're not allowed to join because of asthma from when they are a child.”

In 2017, the Ex-Minister of State for the Armed Forces Mark Francois wrote in a report to the Prime Minister on the state of recruiting for the armed forces that 14,000 potential recruits had been rejected over “medical restrictions.”

He said: “at a time when the armed forces are crying out for new recruits, they have to cope with a medical system which appears bureaucratic and inflexible, and also which often does not demonstrate sufficient attention to individual circumstances and medical histories.”

A year later, in 2018, the National Audit Office found significant problems with the British Army Recruiting Partnering Project.

The 28-year-old has spent years with the Cadets and the Military Intelligence Reserves. (Right to Fight)
The 28-year-old has spent years with the Cadets and the Military Intelligence Reserves. (Right to Fight)

The outsourcing company Capita was awarded the £495 million contract for Army recruitment in 2012, but according to the report the Army had not recruited the number of soldiers it required in any year since the contract began.

The Commons Defence Committee was told in October the same year that the Army had 77,000 fully trained troops compared with a target of 82,500.

The recruit said an obvious solution to fill the gap was for the Armed Forces to review their medical policies.

“Considering that the army is 5,000 troops low from where it needs to be surely the army would be able to find those 5,000 troops out of those 14,000 by really looking at their medical policy,” he said.

“Instead they’re approaching troops from the Commonwealth and they've decided to employ more Gurkhas recently to try and get the numbers up.”

The Standard has approached the MoD for comment.