§ 33. Mr. Giles Shawasked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the average time taken for processing applications for war medals; how many people are employed on this task; and how many applicants are on the waiting list.
§ Mr. Robert C. BrownThe Army Medal Office is largely responsible for handling the issue of all medals for all three Services and has a total staff of 68. It is impractical to identify the exact proportion devoted directly to this particular task. An additional four people are employed on work arising specifically from war medal applications for the other two Services.
Once the task of processing actually begins the time taken to deal with each application is normally between three and 10 weeks according to the Service. The Army Medal Office currently has a waiting list of some 15,000 applicants while the total for the other Services is of the order of 400.