Recommissioning 14 Dock at Devonport will allow legacy submarine defuelling to restart, paid for from the £7.1 billion going into the naval base over the next decade under Project Royal Oak, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member for Huntingdon, asked what progress the department has made in re-establishing a safe and secure defuelling capability at Devonport Dockyard.
Luke Pollard, the Minister of State for Defence, said: “As part of Project Royal Oak, £7.1 billion will be invested in HMNB Devonport over the next decade. Part of this investment is being used to complete the 14 Dock recommissioning programme, which will enable the recommencement of legacy submarine defueling activity.”
Defuelling at Devonport stopped in 2004, and the submarines that have decommissioned since then have been held afloat with their fuel still aboard, tied up in the Hamoaze and requiring crews, monitoring and maintenance for decades after their operational lives ended. Restarting the capability is the step that unlocks the rest of the dismantling process, since a boat cannot be broken up until its reactor fuel has been removed.
The Submarine Dismantling Project has been running since 2011 and demonstrated the later stages at Rosyth, where Swiftsure was taken apart as the trial vessel and the work was completed last year. The Devonport boats have been waiting on the defuelling step, and the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office have both examined the cost of storing them.
Project Royal Oak is the wider rebuild of the naval base infrastructure that the submarine flotilla depends on, and it covers dock recommissioning, deep maintenance facilities and the shore support the Astute and Dreadnought classes will need through their lives. The programme was mapped out this year at around £26 billion across the naval bases, with Devonport taking the £7.1 billion share.
Devonport’s role is changing as Faslane consolidates the operational submarine flotilla, with the Plymouth base holding deep maintenance, refits and now the disposal pipeline. This publication reported recently that the Navy is looking to accelerate the Devonport submarine upgrades, and that more refit work is being done at Faslane while the Devonport docks are rebuilt.
