The ‘Bournville of weapons' powering Britain's rearmament

Telegraph

30-03-2025

The town hall at the centre of Barrow-on-Furness is an extravagant piece of Gothic architecture, crowned by a 164ft clock tower that rings out on the hour, every hour.
It was built in 1886 as a symbol of prosperity, when shipbuilding and steel making thrived in the Cumbrian port town.
Today, however, the building is less a monument of success and serves more as a painful reminder of Barrow's prosperous past.
The surrounding streets are plagued by boarded-up shops and broken windows, while a neighbouring multi-storey car park was closed last year because so few people were driving to the town centre.
'There are lots of places that have been derelict for years,' sighs Trevor Vincent, who works in a nearby charity shop.
'Everything is closing down – all we've got left are barbers, takeaways and vape shops.'
Yet this isn't merely a familiar tale about a northern town once a champion of industry. In fact, Barrow is still home to the country's most important defence manufacturing site.
Run by BAE Systems, the Devonshire Dock complex still employs one in three people in the town.
This is where thousands of highly skilled workers operate, in the most secret of conditions, to build the huge submarines that provide the UK's ultimate security guarantee – the at-sea nuclear deterrent.
'Team Barrow'
Since the end of the Cold War, business has been painfully slow. But now, as Britain rearms, Barrow's skills are in demand again – and the yard is poised to be busier than ever.
The pipeline of work should reinvigorate the town, in no small part because it will trigger a population surge.
Over the next decade, as BAE's workforce grows, Barrow is expected to balloon in size from 60,000 people to 90,000, as workers and their families move to the area.
That means new infrastructure will be needed, including bigger hospital facilities, more schools and thousands of new homes.
But if BAE is to get the talent it needs, it will also require a transformation of the town's decaying urban centre so that people want to live there.
Within Whitehall, the issue is so urgent that the Government has partnered with the local council and BAE to push the project forward.
Known as 'Team Barrow', the scheme has been handed £200m in Treasury funding and is being led by Simon Case, the former Cabinet secretary.
In scope, the proposed regeneration has drawn comparisons to Bournville, the model village built by the Cadbury family to house the workers at their chocolate factories.
Case says Barrow is 'the living, breathing example' of what happened to some industrial towns after the government cut defence spending following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Barrow grew rapidly in the late 1800s after industrialist Henry Schneider found iron ore nearby and began shipping it out of the port. The town quickly transformed into the world's largest steelworks.
Business remained strong through the industrial revolution, both World Wars and then the Cold War, as the Devonshire dockyard built dozens of Royal Navy vessels, including aircraft carriers, frigates, submarines and destroyers in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.
But since the early 2000s, that workload has shrunk to just 11 submarines, including two Astute-class boats yet to be delivered.
'The town's fortune has gone up and down with the yard,' Case says. 'And so when the work for the yard dropped off, that is when worklessness and other problems started to grow.'
Signs of decline
Today, it is one of the most deprived areas in the country, scoring poorly on unemployment, education, child poverty and life expectancy when compared to the national average.
The rate of economic inactivity in Barrow is 41.4pc, including 26.2pc of people who are retired. This is higher than average for both the UK and the North West.
The most visible sign of this decline can be seen in the town's main shopping streets – once-bustling places now pockmarked with boarded-up store fronts.
Like other 'Barrovians' that The Telegraph spoke to on Thursday, charity shop worker Vincent, who was accompanied by his 15-year-old daughter, said the most depressing aspect of the town's decline has been the feeling that there is nothing to do locally.
In recent years, major retail brands, including WH Smith, have abandoned the town, while large units have been left vacant by the collapse of retail chains such as Wilko and Debenhams.
'I grew up here and I've never seen it this bad,' says Vincent, 46.
Many people have stopped coming into Barrow to shop and instead go to nearby market towns such as Ulverston or Kendal, he says, with some even going as far afield as Lancaster.
'Who's going to come into a town where there's nothing to do?' asks former shipyard worker John Pringle, 71, walking with his friend Brian Beard, 75, to a nearby pub.
A national asset
But with the shipyard ramping up again, Case says regenerating Barrow has become a national and moral imperative.
With tensions rising around the world, the Royal Navy has placed a £31bn order for four Dreadnought-class submarines, which will replace the nuclear-armed Vanguard boats, as well as a fleet of new Aukus-class attack submarines that will enter service from the late 2030s.
To keep Britain secure, these need to be delivered on time and to cutting-edge specifications.
'Getting our boats out of Barrow is of profound importance to our nation's security,' Case says.
'With the pressure that we've got on getting the Astute boats finished, then Dreadnought and then Aukus, we started to focus on this two years ago for almost Bournville-like reasons.
'The town is a strategic national asset, although it hasn't always been viewed that way.
'Pretty quickly, we realised we needed Team Barrow to create an environment that would deliver that happy, skilled workforce we need to support the defence nuclear enterprise.
'Thanks to Mr Putin and Mr Xi, the business case makes itself.'
This will involve a variety of measures, says Case, with Team Barrow aiming to use its money to 'catalyse' private investment or directly intervene where necessary.
For example, the council is using government funding to clean up a large brownfield site near the dockyard. This will allow for a new 800-home waterfront development known as 'Marina Village'.
It is part of efforts to kickstart building in the area, which has only delivered around 80 homes a year previously, but will soon need to start building up to 1000 annually.
Another boost to the town has come from the University of Cumbria, which has built a new campus next to the BAE yard that will offer courses in engineering, project management, computer science and nursing.
'Barrow is about to become a university town,' says Case. 'That's never been said about Barrow before – and it is a sign of the ambition we have here.'
Grand plans
Back in the town centre, BAE is also literally setting up shop.
In a bid to draw attention to the regeneration plans, it has bought units formerly used by WH Smith and Debenhams and converted the former into a modern exhibition centre called 'the Bridge'. Here, people can learn about opportunities in the area, and not only those at the yard.
There are even grander plans for the former Debenhams department store next door, which the company wants to transform into a high-tech training centre.
It will provide a space for workers to learn complex welding techniques or other technical aspects of submarines, using large-scale models.
Crucially, however, the building's designs do not include a canteen – meaning the 600 or so people who go there every day will have to venture outside for lunch.
'We're hoping that the captive audience of people will really drive economic activity into the town centre once again,' explains Catherine Reay, a project manager at BAE who will eventually run the new training centre.
A broader masterplan for the town centre is also being drawn up, with policymakers considering creating a local development company that will have the power to oversee major changes.
The plans are also likely to include rejuvenating some of the most battered buildings to make them fit for new tenants.
Green shoots
Though it is still early days, Case points to 'green shoots', including the opening of a new coffee shop, Coffee D'Ash, in the Portland Walk arcade, as well as a new branch of the Furness Building Society.
Ash Holroyd, 33, says he bet on the town's future by opening his cafe in September last year, having previously run a coffee van in the town's market.
'We need businesses to support the town,' he says. 'I hope this will spur people to come and socialise again.'
While chatting, customers of all ages come and go and Holroyd greets most by name.
Case argues that this is the sort of family-friendly venue that Barrow needs more of to help attract high-skilled workers, some of whom currently choose to live in nearby towns and commute in.
'For families transferring in from somewhere else in the country, of course, they'll have the option of living in some absolutely beautiful towns and villages nearby,' Case says.
'But we want Barrow to be an attractive, viable option for them as well.'
In the long term, Case hopes the town can diversify its economy, potentially by securing green energy jobs from the construction of new wind farms in the Irish Sea.
Barrow does have several things going for it already, including an active local art scene, close proximity to the Lake District, beaches and major bird-watching spots such as Walney Island.
There are also hopes that a revamp of the local theatre, the Forum, and other initiatives will help bring in more visitors.
BAE apprentice Abbie Cocker, 21, who is training to be a project manager, says having access to the national park has changed her life.
'A lot of people who come from further away haven't experienced the Lake District, but it started my love of walking,' she says. 'I'd never move back home now.'
'If you go back to the Bournville example, that tells you of a time when prosperous towns had these partnerships between government and industry, and they produced magnificent structures like the town hall.
'We are now getting investors who are starting to say, 'Hey, this looks like a town with a future. How can we get involved?''
With enough willpower, it's a future that could restore Barrow to its former glory.