The Defence Training Academy, St Athan

The Defence Training Rationalisation Programme (DTR) is a Public Private Partnership Programme to modernise the delivery of professional and trade training in the military and the continued professional development of the armed forces. Training will be delivered on a tri-service basis and no longer separately by the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

The areas of specialist training include three engineering disciplines (aeronautical, electro-mechanical and communications/IT); logistics training, Joint Police and Personnel Administration; Security; Languages, Intelligence and Photography. The total contract value is in the order of £14bn. over a 25 year period.

Metrix, (a private sector consortium including Qinetiq, Land Securities Trillium and Raytheon) is bidding to bring a major part of this training provision to South Wales and the St Athan site.

The site at St Athan meets the requirements for delivering a world-class Training Academy alongside the Welsh Assembly Government’s proposals to create an Aerospace Centre of Excellence. Both the Defence Training Academy and the Aerospace Centre of Excellence can be accommodated on the St Athan site and would be complementary.

The Training Academy will result in about 4,000 new jobs being brought to and created on the site, and about a further 1,500 jobs off site.

It has been calculated that the jobs created with the Training Academy, plus the trainees attending the Academy, will contribute about £58.7 million per annum to the local economy, whilst additional contributions to the local economy will arise as a result of indirect employment, visitors and the aerospace development on the St Athan site.

The Training Academy will accommodate the great majority of its living accommodation within the site, with a standing student population of around 7,000 and a total site population of over 10,000.

In relation to the Training Academy proposal, the key dates are as follows:

- Late 2006 Preferred Bidder Announcement by MoD

- October 2007 Financial Close on DTR Project with MOD

- November 2007 Commencement of Construction on Site

- January 2011 Opening of the Training Academy

I would emphasise that this opportunity will not in any way diminish our commitment to the aerospace park and our determination to deliver new employment opportunities for the highly skilled workforce at St Athan. We will press ahead on this whatever the outcome of the DTR bid.

What we have at St Athan is one of the most impressive commercial aerospace opportunities in Europe.  The Assembly Government has already been very successful in identifying new opportunities for the St Athan site following the MoD’s decision on the Defence Aviation Repair Agency.  I recently announced that 300 new jobs will be created at Aerospace Wales St Athan over the next 12 months by internationally acclaimed aerospace companies, ATC Lasham and TES Aviation Group.  We continue to receive new enquiries regularly and are currently in discussion with a number of potential commercial occupiers.


I am confident that the St Athan bid is the best not just for St Athan and for Wales but for the MoD and the UK.  It is the only location under public ownership capable of accommodating all of the DTR project on one site and Metrix is the only consortium bidding for both DTR contracts. However, we are by no means complacent, the MoD has also received strong competing bids based on other locations and I would therefore call on all members to give their full support to the St Athan bid.

The Metrix Consortium has kindly offered to give a presentation of the proposals to Assembly Members