AS REPORTED on Wednesday, the city's political and civic leaders are meeting to discuss and co-ordinatechallenges to any proposed cutbacks in the Royal Navy's presence at Devonport, which may result from the latest Strategic Defence Review.

Inevitably, this well-intentioned approach to the issue is doomed to fail, just as previous such local initiatives have foundered. This is chiefly due to their parochial failure to accept and address wider realities in a more outwardly imaginative and visionary fashion. Swindon once had one of the largest and finest railway works in the world, but that era has now past and there's no point today in that town's leaders calling for its re-instatement. Likewise, Devonport was in the past a key element in servicing a global naval fleet of 1,000 ships, but not today's 37 (and probably reducing). Back in 1813, the Government of the day initiated a 25 per cent cutback in the Royal Navy which hit Devonport hard, but the civic and business leaders of the day held an emergency meeting at Plymouth's Guildhall and decided to exert greater direct local control themselves over the town's economic destiny. They did this by forming a Chamber of Commerce and embarking upon development of new industries.

Now, in 2010, the time has come for Plymouth to apply similar creativity and energetic new leadership: chiefly, to deliver a simple reversal of roles. Instead of the MoD managing a regional port of significantly empty berths (under the Dockyard Ports Regulations of 1865) within which some constrained commercial activity is permitted, we should move on to the creation of a overall commercial Plymouth Port Authority like London, Liverpool, Bristol, Tyne and Southampton. This would lift the 1865 regulations as they apply to Plymouth (already done at Rosyth in 2002), [enable] privatisation and provide absolute flexibility for the Royal Navy to 'lease back' as a tenant the reduced facilities it may need over the years and decades ahead, at far less overall cost to the MoD. Certainly what must not happen is a piecemeal sell-off of disused parts of the port hinterland (nor standalone developments such as the proposed incinerator project in North Yard, nor the 'nuclear scrapyard' suggestion), which would later compromise the future capacity of a fully commercialised port to operate: a lesson which we should, by now, have learned from our experiences which have so constrained the potential of our City Airport. Defence contracting is based upon competitive tendering, so engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce wins substantial naval supply contracts from its based in Derby and does not need to be located in Devonport or Portsmouth to do so. We in Plymouth have world-class defence suppliers, such as Babcock, which are fully competent to continue winning orders — irrespective of where the Navy's ships may be berthed. Let's place the lost lobbying battles of the past behind us and work with the MoD in jointly resolving the 'Devonport Issue' once and for all.

Let's aim to expand a dynamic, commercially-driven regional port, while welcoming the Navy as a much-valued customer, laying the foundations for a coherent and sustainable new future for the Port of Plymouth: a truly exciting prospect.

NEILL MITCHELL

Independent Regional Transport Analyst

Plymouth