Chancellor Confirms £6bn Faslane Dry Dock Contracts Will Go to British Shipyards

Three floating dry docks needed to service the Royal Navy's nuclear submarine fleet at Faslane will be built in the UK under contracts worth £6bn, the chancellor has confirmed. John Healey told the Labour conference in Liverpool that the facilities were essential to national security and would form part of what he described as a "new age of industrialisation" for Britain.

The docks are intended to support the maintenance and repair of the UK's nuclear-powered submarines based at HM Naval Base Clyde, on the eastern shore of Gare Loch. The investment forms part of a wider £15bn modernisation of the Faslane site spread over the coming decade, reflecting the base's central role in the country's continuous at-sea deterrent.

A UK-only competition will determine which shipbuilder secures the work, meaning the contracts cannot be awarded to overseas yards. Navantia UK, the British division of the Spanish state-owned shipbuilder, is widely regarded as the frontrunner after a sustained lobbying effort. The company owns the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast along with fabrication sites at Arnish on the Isle of Lewis, Methil in Fife and Appledore in Devon.

The GMB union has previously written to Healey urging that the work be divided between the Methil and Belfast sites, a sign of the intense interest among workforce representatives in how the contracts are allocated. Other potential bidders include the Cammell Laird shipyard on Merseyside, now owned by Balaena, and Babcock, which has facilities at Rosyth.

Floating dry docks are vessels that can be partly submerged so that a submarine or ship can be manoeuvred into position above them. They are then raised and pumped clear of water, allowing inspections, maintenance and repairs to be carried out on the hull and other systems. Unlike fixed land-based docks, they can be towed between locations, giving naval planners greater flexibility over how and where work is performed.

The last floating dry dock to be constructed in the UK is thought to be Admiralty Dock 60, which was built in the 1960s. It served at HMNB Clyde at Faslane until the late 1990s, when it was sold for commercial use. Since then, the base has depended heavily on a single shiplift, an elevator-style device that hoists submarines out of the water inside a large maintenance building for servicing.

Healey told delegates that the government would commit the money because the facilities are vital to protecting the country for decades ahead. He framed the decision as evidence that British defence spending can simultaneously strengthen national security and create skilled industrial jobs, arguing that the docks would be constructed in Britain by British workers as a direct result of choices made by the Labour government.

The chancellor also pledged £115m for the construction in the UK of a new marine research vessel to replace Cefas Endeavour, the government's principal fisheries and marine science ship. The replacement is expected to be up to 85m (279ft) long, a size well suited to the capabilities of the Ferguson shipyard in Port Glasgow, which could bid for the work.

Cefas Endeavour is operated by the Centre of Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and is based at Lowestoft in Suffolk. It was launched in 2002 by the Clyde yard, which has since been nationalised, and entered service the following year. The vessel was technically demanding to build, with exacting specifications for noise and vibration so that survey work would not disturb fish populations.

Twenty years on, the ship remains in active service, and its successor is not expected to be delivered until the early 2030s. Ferguson's is likely to face competition from commercial yards including Navantia and Cammell Laird, but the order would represent a significant opportunity for a yard whose order book and workforce have been under scrutiny in recent years.

In a further boost to British manufacturing, Healey announced that Rolls-Royce will invest an additional £300m in its factories in Derby, Bristol, Glasgow and Rotherham. The commitment adds to the industrial theme of the conference speech, which sought to link defence investment with regional employment and supply-chain growth.

The announcements come amid continuing debate over how best to sustain the UK's shipbuilding capacity while meeting the operational demands of the Royal Navy. Defence analysts note that submarine maintenance is a highly specialised field, requiring secure facilities, skilled engineers and long-term planning, and that bottlenecks in dry-docking capacity can affect the availability of vessels.

For the communities around Faslane and the wider Firth of Clyde, the £15bn upgrade programme promises years of construction activity and supporting contracts. For the shipyards competing for the dry dock work, the £6bn package would be among the largest UK naval fabrication orders in decades and could help secure jobs and apprenticeships across several regions.

The government has not set out a timetable for the bidding competition or indicated when a preferred builder will be named. What is clear is that the contracts will remain onshore, a decision that ministers present as a strategic necessity as well as an industrial policy choice, and one that will shape the future of Britain's submarine maintenance capability for years to come.