BAE Systems win £446m contract

Defence giant BAE Systems has received a five-year, £446 million contract to provide a range of engineering support services for the fleet of Typhoon jets.

The order will help to sustain around 600 jobs at BAE Systems' Warton and Samlesbury sites in Lancashire focused on engineering, supply chain and project management.

Martin Taylor, BAE Systems' combat air support director, said: "This contract is great news for BAE Systems and for the Eurofighter programme as a whole. Over a five-year period the contract will deliver significant savings to the customer and will ensure that we have the skills, capabilities and funding in place to support Typhoon users across Europe."

Ian Waddell, national officer of the Unite union, said: "This welcome news will bring some relief to the highly skilled workers at BAE's Warton and Samlesbury sites. They have been under huge pressure after the company announced 3,000 redundancies in military aircraft production last year.

"It demonstrates that governments can provide the clarity of funding which allows companies like BAE Systems to plan effectively and therefore safeguard jobs.

"Engineers are in desperately short supply and this announcement means these critical staff are assured a secure future with BAE Systems, which is also good news for the UK economy.

"This is one small example of the desperate need for the UK to adopt a Defence Industrial Strategy which lays out the Government's defence procurement plans and allows the UK defence industry to make decisions with some certainty."

Unite said it was seeking clarification on whether the announcement means that last September's threatened compulsory job losses would now go ahead.

PA