Former cabinet secretary Simon Case has been appointed to lead the board overseeing a £200m regeneration project to make Barrow-in-Furness the home of nuclear submarine-building in the UK.
The Ministry of Housing and Local Government named Case, who left government last month, as independent chair of the Barrow Delivery Board yesterday.
The board is managing a 10-year, £200m fund to “deepen and develop“ the Cumbrian town's “crucial role at the heart of UK national security and nuclear submarine-building”.
The board will deliver the Plan for Barrow – a strategy set out by Team Barrow, a partnership between central government, Westmorland and Furness Council and BAE Systems, to regenerate the town.
The plan sets out steps to grow the defence contractor’s 14,500-strong workforce in the town to enable it to deliver the Astute, Dreadnought and SSN-AUKUS submarine programmes. It also includes proposals to improve housing, the town centre, transport and other public services in an effort to diversify and strengthen the town’s economy and increase productivity.
BAE Systems’ Barrow shipyard is "the only facility in the UK with the infrastructure, site licence and resource to design and build the UK’s nuclear submarines – including the new Dreadnought class,” local growth minister Alex Norris said yesterday in a statement to the House of Commons.
“This is a crucial, outward-facing role that will set the strategic vision of the Board, deliver the Plan for Barrow, and ensure that Barrow’s community sees the fullest benefits,” Norris said of Case's appointment.
Case worked on the Plan for Barrow while he was cab sec, Norris said, “providing him with an understanding of both the area and the defence imperative of the work required”.
The funding package is being overseen by the Defence Nuclear Enterprise – a network of organisations and arrangements responsible for maintaining the UK’s nuclear deterrent and submarine forces. It includes the Ministry of Defence, the Defence Nuclear Organisation, the Submarine Delivery Agency and Defence Equipment and Support, as well as the Royal Navy and a number of defence companies.
The group will include representatives from MHCLG and the Ministry of Defence and “will embody this government’s commitment to empowering local leadership, taking independent and bold decisions in Barrow’s best interests”, Norris said.
Case said he was “delighted” at the appointment.
“Barrow is critical to our national security; there’s nowhere else in the country with the unique set of skills and supporting infrastructure required to deliver complex nuclear submarines, so it’s vital we invest now to sustain this capability,” he said.
“Barrow is a fantastic town and the government’s long-term commitment to the UK’s submarine programme means it has an exciting future, but it’s not without its challenges. Our task is to address these, turn ambition into reality and help transform Barrow into a place where people choose to live, work and thrive.”
Case nodded to the project in his final speech as cabinet secretary in December, recognising the work of a former fast streamer who is now working on the regeneration effort.
He said "Eloise" – one of eight officials he said exemplified the best traits of the civil service – was embedded in the region, “embodying the idea that we do a better job when we have people designing policies and focusing on places where they themselves have roots".
This approach, he said, is “in stark contrast to the old model of civil servants clustered in London like iron filings stuck to the Whitehall magnet – a model which must be consigned to history.”