BRITAIN’S oldest naval base at Plymouth will close within five years with the Royal Navy’s submarines moving to Faslane in Scotland, senior defence sources said this weekend.

The base at Devonport from which Drake set sail to destroy the Spanish Armada and Cook embarked to discover Australia will have five of its frigates axed in defence cuts expected within weeks. Its expertise in refuelling and refitting nuclear submarines has become irrelevant because the new Astute submarines will have nuclear cores that last for the life of the vessel.

With only two of the navy’s existing nuclear submarines still requiring mid-life servicing, both naval and industry sources said last week that the dockyard had no long-term future.

The dockyards will therefore be allowed to wither on the vine in favour of Portsmouth and Rosyth, in the Firth of Forth - despite assurances from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Des Browne, the defence secretary, that the dockyard had a future.

A review of the navy’s three bases (Plymouth, Portsmouth and Rosyth) had been expected to result in the closure of Plymouth or Portsmouth. Browne told MPs in July that the review had ended with a decision to keep all three dockyards open along with the submarine base at Faslane, on the Scottish west coast, but this weekend sources challenged this assertion.

They said Devonport’s future would be nonexistent once the last two Vanguard submarines were refuelled in 2012. The axing of the five frigates will leave Plymouth with just nine surface ships and seven Trafalgar-class submarines, which will be replaced by the Astute submarines based at Faslane. Its six remaining frigates and three amphibious ships will be moved to Portsmouth, a senior naval source said.

“All that Plymouth will have will be the rusting hulks of the Trafalgar and Swiftsure class, which will be decommissioned slowly over the next five years as the Astute class comes into service,” he added.

Gary Streeter, Conservative MP for Devon South West, said: “When the naval base review took place we thought it was a two-horse race. We have somehow managed to come third. There is a great anxiety now that we will suffer a death by a thousand cuts.”

Naval and industry sources suggested Browne’s dual role as defence and Scottish secretary, and the fact that many Rosyth workers live in Brown’s constituency counted against Plymouth.

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