Award inflation

Award Inflation is sometimes used to refer to the issues that occurs when a higher precedence award is created in the same path as an existing award; e.g. a Grant Level Award in, say, service, when an AoA Level Award already exists. When the new award is created one option is to boot the old award up to the new tier and create a lower tier award. This runs the risk of suddenly granting a higher "rank" to a set or subset of people who might not have received the award if it had been originally constituted at the higher level.

Another option is to create a new higher tier award which then, in some sense, might be seen to devalue the existing award since the original award might not be viewed as a more introductory award. This is sometimes referred to as Award Inflation.

The implications of this with respect to the White Scarf and proposed rapier peerage are left as an exercise for the reader.