A booming university and revived defence industry puts Plymouth back on the map

Good afternoon, I’m George Parker, the FT’s political editor.

Long, long ago, I started my journalistic career on the local paper, the Western Morning News, and met my future wife Gabrielle in the Plymouth newsroom. Our first date, a trek across a Dartmoor bog, is seared in her memory.

So I jumped at the chance to have a fresh look at the region, how it is doing, its problems and its huge promise. Starting, of course, with the far South West’s biggest city, Plymouth.

Britain’s Ocean City

Hands up, who gets Plymouth confused with Portsmouth? Quite a few people, in my experience. Similar names, naval cities, slightly outside the mainstream of British economic and cultural life, both a little down at heel.

For too long, it seemed to me, Plymouth was overly dependent on state spending — specifically at the sprawling Devonport Dockyard naval complex — which seemed to have sucked out the entrepreneurial spirit of this city of 270,000.

Bombed in the second world war, unsympathetically rebuilt in the aftermath, Plymouth was an economic outlier: too far away, often forgotten. The end of the cold war posed a clear threat to its old economic model but the city seemed slow to adapt.

An example of the entrepreneurial deficit: Brittany Ferries, which operates a service from Plymouth to Roscoff, was not set up by Plymothians to take Brits on their summer holidays (80 per cent of its passengers are UK nationals) but by Breton cauliflower farmers looking for export markets.

But now things are starting to move. I bumped into the veteran Labour leader of Plymouth city council, Tudor Evans, the other day and heard a story of a city with huge potential that it is now starting to realise.

A city once too dependent on military spending is now enjoying the best of both worlds. While Plymouth has diversified its economy with a booming university, creative arts sector and high-skilled engineering, the threat posed by Russia has revived its defence sector.

Evans tells me that £4.4bn is being spent at Devonport to prepare its docks for the maintenance of the next generation of submarines, which he says are going to be “fatter and longer”.

“We now have workstreams out to 2050/60,” he says. “The defence industry in Plymouth is really about to take off again. We’re going to need another 5,500 new workers with skills to replace the ones who are going to retire.”

Devonport will thus remain an economic anchor for the city, providing highly skilled work at one of western Europe’s biggest naval maintenance centres for decades to come. But Evans knows that is not enough.

Plymouth is also building up a reputation as a centre for advanced manufacturing: for example the 3,000 workers at Princess Yachts, which makes some of the luxury yachts that clutter up docksides around the Mediterranean at this time of year.

In the many years since I worked in Plymouth you can see the change. Students have flocked to the city, with its affordable housing and unrivalled lifestyle, while cafés and restaurants have proliferated. When I worked there, we used to joke that there was just a single wine bar: the best night out was at the Sea Anglers’ club.

Plymouth university alone now has some 25,000 students, a counterweight to the nearby and long-established Exeter university, with specialisms in marine and maritime work. Signs at the edge of town welcome you to “Britain’s Ocean City”.

Few cities offer you the chance to wander off for a lunchtime dip in a refurbished art deco seawater pool (Tinside) or into the sea itself. “Wild swimming — or swimming, as we call it,” Evans smiles. Alternatively you can take off after work for the wilderness of Dartmoor national park or some of the finest beaches in the country.

There are problems of course. Transport connections through the Devon hills are slow (three hours at least to London by train) and the city’s airport closed in 2011. Exeter, a cathedral city 45 miles closer to London with better connections, has long been a magnet for investment and white-collar jobs.

“We don’t have as many friends in high places as we might,” Evans concedes. “But the people who come to Plymouth, they get it, they love it.” His enthusiasm is infectious and I’m glad the city is heading in the right direction. It feels to me like a city for the 21st century. Stand on Plymouth Hoe with the sun setting over the Sound and you’ll see what I mean.

Britain in numbers

One of the most astute observers of the West Country economy is Sir Michael Barber, chancellor of Exeter university, perhaps best known as the former head of Tony Blair’s delivery unit. He is now providing advice to Sir Keir Starmer too.

Barber until recently chaired a South West social mobility commission, looking to improve the region’s poor record in this area. When I attended my Devon comprehensive school, low achievement — known as “normal for Tiverton” — was often accepted as inevitable.

“The South West economy was traditionally based on agriculture and tourism,” Barber tells me. “That often leads to a low skill, low expectation education system. That has to change. The education system needs to raise its sights and it is doing so. Employers need to be really clear about the skills they need.

“For kids from low income backgrounds, you’re less likely to make it through to university and top jobs than any other region.” Fortunately things are improving. In a region associated with an ageing population, the West Country needs to invest in its young people.

Schools and colleges are now supplying the workforce the region needs, including for the new cluster of high-skilled manufacturing sites near Bridgwater, such as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station and a vast new battery gigafactory for Jaguar Land Rover.

Around the region, from Appledore’s offshore wind to Plymouth’s Box cultural centre and plans to reopen the ancient tin industry in Cornwall, the future is looking bright for a region that — in an era of homeworking — already has so many visible advantages.

But I can’t let Barber, also chair of Somerset County Cricket Club, go without discussing our shared passion for the game and the unique scrumpy-fuelled atmosphere at Taunton’s County Ground. “Our stated objective is to inspire the region through cricket,” he says.

I grew up watching Ian Botham, Joel Garner and Viv Richards with my grandad, but today’s team is also hugely successful, packed with local talent. Hopefully Somerset will again lift the T20 Blast trophy in September, providing another chance to sing the Wurzels’ West Country national anthem “Blackbird” and adding heft to the club’s slogan: “Our Region Rises.”

The State of Britain is edited by Gordon Smith. Premium subscribers can sign up here to have it delivered straight to their inbox every Thursday afternoon. Or you can take out a Premium subscription here. Read earlier editions of the newsletter here.