Plymouth’s defence industrial programme is moving into delivery after the UK government approved the city’s strategic business case and released £50 million through the Defence Growth Deal, with industry and local partners expected to provide up to a further £34 million.
The resulting package is intended to expand marine autonomy capability, create industrial and commercial space, support skills programmes and develop the National Centre for Marine Autonomy. The Ministry of Defence said the combined programme could create nearly 1,000 jobs, help 500 people into work and benefit more than 400 UK businesses.
The National Centre for Marine Autonomy is expected to account for 120 of those jobs and attract more than 30 businesses, including start-ups and scaleups developing autonomous maritime technologies. The programme is designed to connect testing, development, waterfront access, skills and business growth rather than separating autonomy research from the industrial infrastructure needed to commercialise it.
A newly confirmed £1.5 million Get Plymouth Working scheme will focus on defence, advanced manufacturing, engineering and construction. Government projections put the number gaining new technical skills and qualifications at about 750, while more than 7,000 young people are expected to receive STEM training.
The funding builds on the £50 million Defence Growth Deal first announced in April, when the government set out plans for waterfront innovation laboratories, testing facilities and a Marine Autonomy Trials Authority. Approval of Team Plymouth’s strategic business case now releases the government allocation and moves the programme towards implementation.
Sir Chris Gardner, senior responsible owner for Team Plymouth, said: “The release of the Defence Growth Deal funding will help further establish Plymouth as the UK’s National Centre for Marine Autonomy, creating jobs, supporting businesses and investing in the skills needed for the future.”
The autonomy programme sits alongside a much larger programme of naval infrastructure work at HMNB Devonport. Royal Oak includes £7.1 billion of upgrades and new infrastructure at Devonport, supporting submarine maintenance and future fleet requirements over the coming decade.
The two workloads are related but distinct. Devonport’s programme is dominated by docks, utilities, nuclear engineering, buildings, maintenance facilities and long term naval support. The Defence Growth Deal is aimed more directly at autonomy, smaller technology companies, test infrastructure, commercial space and the workforce needed to turn development projects into deployable systems.
Babcock International, one of the region’s largest defence employers and a founding Team Plymouth member, is part of the wider industrial base around the programme. Neal Misell, Babcock’s chief executive officer for Nuclear, said the deal connected people more directly with industry requirements and could turn existing defence strengths into longer term capability, skills, jobs and growth.
The Ministry of Defence said it spent more than £6.6 billion in the South West during 2024/25, directly supporting 37,300 industry jobs, with almost £400 million going to small and medium sized businesses. Those figures pre-date the new package, but they indicate the scale of the existing customer base and supply network into which the autonomy programme will be introduced.
Marine autonomy requires more than the vehicles themselves. Uncrewed surface and subsurface systems need sensors, communications, navigation, command and control, power systems, launch and recovery equipment, maintenance, software assurance, secure data handling and access to representative test environments.
A regional centre can bring more of those functions together, although successful trials still have to translate into procurement and repeat production. Technology companies need routes into programmes, waterfront access needs to support regular testing rather than isolated demonstrations, and the workforce has to cover software and electronics as well as mechanical and marine engineering.
Physical space is part of the plan. The government said the latest investment will support regeneration of the Turnchapel waterfront and development of new industrial and commercial premises, providing room for companies that need access to water as well as workshops, engineering space and secure technical facilities.
Skills may prove the tighter constraint as investment accelerates. Plymouth is already absorbing major naval infrastructure work, and marine autonomy draws on overlapping capabilities in systems engineering, software, electronics, manufacturing, robotics, electrical engineering and project delivery. Training numbers will carry limited value unless they result in people with qualifications and experience that match programmes entering production and service.
The £84 million headline also depends partly on partner funding, so delivery will be measured in more than government expenditure. Private investment committed, facilities opened, companies attracted, trials completed, skilled vacancies filled and autonomous systems moving into sustained defence programmes will provide a clearer picture of the programme’s progress.
Plymouth now has an approved business case, released government funding, a large naval infrastructure programme running alongside it and an established defence supply base. The next stage is converting those assets into test capacity, manufacturing work, qualified people and orders that keep the new autonomy infrastructure in regular use.
