The Ministry of Defence has officially taken ownership of its new £98.5 million Longtown Defence Storage Facility (LDSF) in Cumbria, a state-of-the-art warehouse that significantly boosts the UK’s defence readiness and supply chain resilience.
Spanning 76,000 square metres, the facility will house critical materiel – including large spare parts for the Royal Navy, Army, and RAF – and is designed to enhance the UK’s ability to respond to military threats and humanitarian crises. Built by McLaughlin & Harvey and managed by Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) in partnership with Team Leidos, the site is expected to create 25 permanent jobs and improve surge response capacity for defence fulfilment centres in Donnington and Bicester.
“The completion of the build phase of the MOD’s Longtown Defence Storage Facility marks a leap forward in our storage of materiel to support all parts of the armed forces,” said Les Millar, Head of Strategy and Special Projects at DE&S. “This gives us a state-of-the-art, environmentally efficient facility to store a significant amount of parts and spares for Defence platforms.”
The handover ceremony included representatives from DE&S, McLaughlin & Harvey, and Team Leidos, marking the transition to operational control. The site features enhanced rail access, energy-efficient technologies, recyclable packaging, and water conservation measures, in line with the MOD’s Net Zero goals.
Paul Griffen, Managing Director of McLaughlin & Harvey, added: “The successful completion of a 76,000m² warehouse wasn’t just another build – it was the delivery of critical national infrastructure within a live, high-security environment.”
Simon Hutchings, Vice President at Leidos UK & Europe, described the facility as “a key milestone in this transformation – enhancing resilience, operational readiness, and efficiency across the Defence supply chain.”
An official opening ceremony is expected later this year.
The building just replaces existing buildings on site, which is primarily a munitions storage facility rather than stores, so good to see.
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Morning Daniele, Unbelievable amount of bot crap getting through on these posts still. Like overgrown weeds. It’s a shame.
Morning Q! I know! They’ve have creeped back in.
A long time ago, it stored complete engines for Tonkas and other RAF aircraft, as well as munitions and other equipment; rail served it created a lot of traffic on both the motorway and railway, the cricket pavilion was a welcome chance to get warm when undertaking KP Ex. . Times change.
Hi David.
Was that at RAF Carlisle or at MoD Longtown and the kit moved there? As Carlisle was a Maint Unit for RAF Stuff like that not far to the south.
Now an industrial estate.
Yes, we talked of the rail link before, you said the link has gone?
14 MU RAFCarlisle. It was general and techical stores ranging from aircraft engine and airframe parts, to clothing. It was also a major transhipment hub for the RAF priority freight distribution service (PFDS) which I redesigned in 1986 into truck service delivering twice a day to all the major RAF Stations active at that time. The then Strike Command had depot storage to frontline Aircraft grounded spares (AOG) delivery time at Priority One of 24 hrs from the point of order within England, Scotland and Wales. As you can imagine, getting Nimrod parts from St Mawgan to Kinloss, or Seaking Rota Blades from Havafordwest. (RAF Brawdy) to RAFLossiemouth by truck with all the transhipments involed was a scheduling challenge but one my Warrant Officer and I rose to successfully.
Thank you, Wing Commander.
Very good to see and a long time coming! Much more of our support infrastructure needs this overhaul. I do get nervous about Leidos’ tendrils however… pretty sure Simon Hutchings was General Hutchings – late RLC, Director Joint Support (with responsibility for Longtown) about two minutes ago. Don’t let the revolving door hit you on the way out.
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Revolving door is definitely the way to progress. Of course there’s nothing to stop the switch from being the cheque signer…to being the cheque receiver. The whole of defence purchasing is structured towards it. With actual quality of supply coming a very poor 3rd behind Cost and Profit. Witness the DE&S love affair with Babcock
It’s more about cutting costs under the gaze of net zero to save face. They pretend to look after the environment until we need to bomb the crap out the enemy. But at least we used recycled packaging in the meantime.
Still nice to see that the facility is still being used.
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Being rather like King’s Lynn, that I Understand from my Late Mother would seem to have been a participant Location for the Hearts of Oak shipbuilding for the British Royal Navy in the Era of Sail ⛵️ and H.M.S. Victory, predecessors and successors like-wise,
Would IT Not Seem “rather difficult for the Flagship(s) of the Nowadays British Royal Navy to get alongside for reasons of Repair Contractors to conduct Necessary Procedures”
That this makes it worthy of a news article, is pretty sad. I wonder if they still store the gas masks for horses etc that were at CAD Longtown in the mid 70s.
Almost everything that was ‘kept because’ in MoD warehouses was junked in the 1980s clear-outs.
There was an enormous amount of useless stuff being stored and it had to get cleared.
Rebuilding yet another neglected capacity that will be too small and not capable of doing the job
Sadly no mention of all the hard work put in by the actual project team