The UK government’s pledge to invest £4.4 billion over the next decade in Plymouth’s Devonport dockyard — the largest naval base in western Europe — is set to create up to 25,000 new jobs, according to estimates by Plymouth city council. The investment marks the city’s largest regeneration effort since it was rebuilt after the Second World War and comes as Plymouth positions itself as one of the government’s five defence growth areas.
“People think it’s all clotted cream and farming, but we do neither of those things,” Tudor Evans, the Labour councillor who leads Plymouth city council, said. “But what we do do is exceptionally clever engineering and manufacturing.”
The roles at the dockyard and across the maritime and defense supply chain are expected to be better paid than many jobs available in the region, where official figures show average weekly wages lag behind those in the rest of England. City council leadership said the influx of positions would raise wages across the city.
“It’s going to give Plymouth as a whole a pay rise,” Evans said, adding that 5,500 dockyard workers will be needed in the coming years simply to replace retirees. “The potential is huge.”
About 300 companies in the maritime and defense supply chain are located in Plymouth. UK-headquartered Babcock manages repairs, maintenance, refitting and defuelling of the country’s nuclear submarine fleet from the privatised section of the Devonport base. Germany’s Helsing, which produces underwater drones, recently opened a facility in the city, and France’s Thales operates a marine autonomy centre while supplying the Royal Navy with uncrewed surface boats and flying drones.
Plymouth Sound serves as a test bed for autonomous and maritime systems, including a laboratory fitted with 5G connectivity and loudspeakers for testing.
Even as geopolitical tensions persist in the Middle East and Royal Navy vessels track Russian ships near UK waters, the military budget has faced debate in Westminster. Local leaders have proceeded with regeneration plans regardless, buoyed by Babcock’s announcement that it will relocate 2,000 of its 7,500 Devonport employees from the dockyard into the city centre. The company plans to convert a former House of Fraser department store into a training centre and offices.
Babcock described a 70-year pipeline of work to maintain the UK’s submarine fleet, a timeline long enough that some workers needed have not yet been born or are still in primary school.
The council’s regeneration strategy includes building 10,000 new homes in the city centre, aiming to keep future defense workers living and spending locally rather than taking their wages elsewhere on weekends. Plymouth city council cited the example of Barrow-in-Furness, where workers who build the UK’s nuclear submarines leave the area after work.
“We do not want those wage packets disappearing up the A38 and the M5 when people finish work to go home for the weekend,” Evans said.
The regeneration plans also include converting the city’s 14-storey civic centre into 144 rental flats and a skills hub for college students. Colourful billboards around the vacant tower block advertise a “wave of investment” and an “exciting future” for the city. Homes England, the government agency responsible for allocating public money for social housing, purchased four large sites in Plymouth.
The city’s postwar layout — a 1960s grid-based concrete vision by planner Patrick Abercrombie that centred a large shopping complex while including few residential spaces — has struggled in recent decades. Shops closed, council staff vacated the civic centre in 2015, and the city centre frequently empties after 5 p.m.
Plymouth’s regeneration plans received a setback when the city was not selected for the government’s new towns programme, which aims to help ministers meet ambitious housebuilding targets. Plymouth lost out to Tempsford in Bedfordshire and Leeds South Bank, proposals that envisioned larger-scale developments on green- or brownfield sites. Crews Hill and Chase Park in north London were selected, but a new Conservative-run administration at Enfield council subsequently withdrew from the scheme.
Ministers have promised Plymouth a “bespoke solution package” to support the city’s expansion as a naval technology centre and to ensure housing quality does not act as a barrier to growth. Details on the package are expected later this summer.
Some local residents have expressed concern that the defense-sector investment may not benefit all Plymouth residents equally. Dr Mike Sheaff, an associate lecturer in sociology at the University of Plymouth, said local leaders must ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared more broadly.
“Plymouth’s politicians face a challenge in demonstrating public money being put into the city centre will bring public benefit,” Sheaff said. “Risks of this being seen as dominated by a commercial, political or military elite should not be ignored.”
The city’s residents are also navigating rising living costs. According to the Office for National Statistics, the average monthly rent in Plymouth reached £985 in March, an increase of about 30 percent compared with five years earlier.
“It is just about affordable here,” said Lorna Logan, a senior teacher at a further education college who moved to Plymouth from London during the pandemic. “Rentals are going up by 6 percent a year.” Logan said she can just manage to afford a two-bedroom flat on her own.
Emmeline Kwaan, a Plymouth native, highlighted the city’s “small city mentality,” noting that residents can live without a car, access the sea, and enjoy a local theatre. She said there is “lots of work to be done” to improve affordability.
Victoria Allen, chief executive of the housing charity Path, said the housing shortage is acute. “We desperately need more homes at all levels,” Allen said. “We work with people at the sharp end of homelessness and also with a lot of people who can’t get access to the private sector at the moment because rents are so high. Increased housing is only going to reduce competition.”
Terri Beer, a former lord mayor and independent councillor, said the exclusion from the new towns programme was a disappointment but welcomed the defense spending increase.
“The world seems to stop at Bristol these days and they forget about us down in Plymouth, because we need money and investment here,” Beer said. “We are vulnerable in the UK, defence-wise, and it’s important that investment is made in defence and creates jobs for people, particularly here in Plymouth.”