Warship building and development of naval under-sea warfare systems are part of the northwest of England’s defence sector. For an outline of how important this sector is to the northwest of England see www.mod.uk/aboutus/keyfacts/factfiles/northwest.htm.

NAVAL SHIPBUILDING CAPACITY AND CAPABILITY ON OFFER IN NORTHWEST ENGLAND

The UK’s largest warship and only submarine builder.

Unique large “design house” with 770 professional designers and physical “superberth” facilities supported by 3,000 skilled people at BAE SYSTEMS, Barrow. A unique resource, capacity, and capability to design, build, test and commission large warships. This is currently under threat with 720 redundancies announced as likely to occur in mid 2004.

• 60%, or thereabouts, of total UK warship design capability, including over 200 professional engineers and 500 detailed designers.
• Unique nuclear site, licensed site for warship construction.
• A long pedigree (60+ years) of building large ‘first of class’ warships for the Royal Navy.
• A resource suitable for building significant parts of the CVF (future aircraft carriers) and MARS (fleet replenishment and joint sea basing logistics support ships).
• Repair facilities for ‘in service’ ships.
• Potential large naval vessel ‘block’ construction facilities at Barrow-in-Furness and smaller block construction facilities at Cammell Laird.