Super defence academy plans unveiled
A new £14 billion training academy for all three armed forces is to be built in south Wales, the defence secretary has announced.
Des Browne said the tri-service campus at St Athan, in the Vale of Glamorgan, would lead a network of “centres of excellence” in a radical shake-up of the way members of the army, navy and Royal Air Force (RAF) are trained.
The Metrix consortium has been granted a contract to move the majority of training for aeronautical engineering, electro-mechanical engineering and communication and information systems from nine locations into one by 2017.
It has also been granted a provisional deal to bring together training services for logistics and personal administration, police and guarding, security, languages intelligence and photography from 18 different locations.
Overall, the Ministry of Defence expects the number of training sites to be cut from about 30 to only ten, with the main campus at St Athan. The aim is to streamline the service and release more military personnel for the frontline.
“Our service men and women deserve the best training we can offer them. The defence training review is all about making the investment needed to modernise the way we train our people,” Mr Browne said.
“It is about providing a more flexible, responsive and effective training system, and at the same time improve living and training accommodation for our people.”
The government has come under fire recently for the living conditions and equipment available to British troops, and has been fighting off claims that deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the armed forces dangerously overstretched.
In the House of Commons today, Conservative MP James Arbuthnot welcomed Tony Blair’s announcement last week of an increase in the defence budget, but questioned whether it would become a reality.
The prime minister retorted: “If we add in the additional sums of money for Iraq and Afghanistan, we have been holding defence spending constant as a proportion of national income, in a vastly growing economy of course, and that compares to a cut of about a third in years before we came to power.
“I agree we have to do far more but thank goodness our record is a good deal better than the previous government.”
Welsh secretary Peter Hain welcomed the announcement as “fantastic news”, saying it was the biggest ever single government investment in Wales and would create 5,500 jobs.
However, Mr Browne’s acknowledgment that the changes would likely lead to redundancies was not been welcomed by trade unions.
“These plans will result in up to 2,000 staff being transferred into a compulsory redundancy situation and see the loss of specialist skills and knowledge,” said Mark Serwotka of the PCS union.
Prospect national secretary Steve Jary added: “This is no way to run the training structure that has served Britain’s armed forces well for many decades.”
