Shipyard future jeopardised by memo

Jul 1 2009

The long-term future of two British shipyards has been brought into question after a leaked memo reportedly showed plans which could see them close them within a decade.

Reports claim the memo was sent from the chief executive of the Govan and Scotstoun yards in Glasgow to senior executives at owners BVT Surface Fleet (BVT) which also has an operation in Portsmouth.

The memo is reported to state that the Ministry of Defence is willing to finance redundancies in order to scale down Britain's capacity for building warships.