The UK seaside town full of abandoned shops with a £220m plan to stop Putin starting WW3

At first sight, Barrow-in-Furness might not strike you as a place that Vladimir Putin and Britain's enemies would fear. Take a stroll past a row of empty shop units in Portland Walk, and it seems like any other UK coastal town fighting for its place in a modern world where Amazon deliveries and internet shopping are a way of life.

But beneath the surface - quite literally - is a revolutionary £220million plan to not only regenerate the Cumbrian port but transform it into a place crucial to the defence of the realm. With threats of World War 3 soaring, Barrow has been designated as a "strategic national asset" for building nuclear submarines to defend the UK from deadly attack. Defence firm BAE Systems has been tasked with building three types of Royal Navy vessels in the town to ensure the UK is war-ready - the Astute Class attack vessel, the Dreadnought Class ballistic missile deterrent, and 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines as part of the AUKUS military alliance with the US and Australia.

But to achieve this, BAE future workforce director Janet Garner says the firm needs 17,000 people with highly specialised technical skills over the next 10 to 15 years.

That has sparked a rush to transform Barrow to ensure it is ready to fight Putin, with the whole fabric of the town being re-examined - from housing, transport and education to the look and feel of the town centre.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has even dubbed Barrow's regeneration a "blueprint" for what should happen nationwide as empty shop units are filled and a new university campus is opened.

Peter Anstiss, chief executive of Team Barrow, which is leading the 10-year transformation, said the town is "the only place you can build attack-class submarines or nuclear submarines in the UK" - making it "absolutely pivotal for UK defence".

He said: "It's a national endeavour. That puts pretty big demands not just on the defence infrastructure of the town, but also on the social infrastructure.

"Our job is to, on the one hand, support the national endeavour to make sure the submarines are built because it has well-qualified people living and working here.

"But I think we've got an obligation to go way beyond that to support the Barrovian families who have lived here through thick and thin, to make sure they're not left behind with all this investment going into defence."

The first move has been for BAE to turn a row of empty shops blighting Portland Walk into an incredible new superhub with shared offices on the site of the town's old WHSmith premises.

The site, called The Bridge, will be followed by a large training centre for BAE workers at the shuttered Debenhams store next door.

Ms Garner said the firm made an "investment decision that meant we would put footfall back through the town centre and start to act as a catalyst for the changes required in this particular area".

It does not have a canteen because BAE wants to be "pushing all of that business out onto the high street", she said.

"That was a very deliberate decision to make sure our investment could actually be felt in the town," she added.

The effect has already been transformational. Since BAE's move, 11 new businesses have popped up nearby.

They include Coffee D'Ash, which expanded from a trailer to a large cafe next door, and a new Furness Building Society branch.

Mr Anstiss said other empty retail units could be made available to entrepreneurs starting businesses.

"One of the things we're recognising with the town centre is that if we solely look for occupancy of shops, we'll probably struggle like most other town centres," he said.

"The goal is to make sure the town centre has a mix of usage."

He sees opportunities for external defence specialists to be based in Barrow, but said the economy must offer diverse choices beyond that.

"The number-one imperative here from a national perspective is to ensure we support the capability to deliver the submarine fleet that we need for the defence of the realm," he said.

"But in managing that, we need to balance what does a good economy look like, what does the social fabric of the town look like."

Another game changer will be the new University of Cumbria campus opening in Buccleuch Dock Road in September, next to a skills academy unveiled in 2018 by BAE to train new apprentices.

The area has a "longstanding history of seeing the shipyard as the only employer", said deputy vice-chancellor Brian Webster-Henderson.

Just 22.5% of people in Barrow have a degree or higher, compared with 33.8% nationally.

Ms Garner also highlighted that GCSE scores are poor compared with the rest of the UK, with BAE mentoring schoolchildren to prepare them for the future.

But Mr Webster-Henderson believes the university will not provide highly qualified workers for the future, but will bolster people's life chances.

"What we're trying to do, which I think is quite unique in the UK, is create a university town in the most extreme peninsula of Cumbria," he said.

"It's a win-win, in my view, because if you bring students in, you're going to bring a bit of vibrancy to the town."

BAE says about 900 homes a year are needed to ensure enough accommodation for new workers.

Yet Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is struggling to meet her 1.5million homes target nationwide, let alone in more remote parts of the country.

Barrow and Furness MP Michelle Scrogham said the big block on new homes is not NIMBYs trying to thwart them, but finding developers willing to take on new projects.

The 26-hectare Marina Village site between Cavendish Dock and Salthouse Road, for example, would provide 808 new homes, but a builder has yet to be found.

Many potential sites are on brownfield land previously used for industry, meaning extra checks for contamination are needed, while there is also a lack of construction labour.

Mr Anstiss added that Barrow's location means there is "so much dependent on that road link", yet key routes such as the A590 are already "bottlenecks". He said: "Upgrading that is an obvious focus."

Unsurprisingly, after years of underinvestment, Barrow residents are sceptical that things will change.

Angela Stalker, 58, from Barrow, said: "I don't see the town centre ever coming back to life."

Dale West, 31, who has lived in Barrow for the past three and a half years, said the town centre was "dying a death".

He added: "All the big stores seem to have closed down. If you want anything, you've got to go online. There's nothing really to get you to come out."

Mother of two Sophie Morris, 38, of neighbouring Walney, said: "We need more shops. There aren't really any clothes shops, it all just seems to be vape shops."

Andy Tomkins, 46, from nearby Askham, said: "You can tell there are a lot of empty shops. If I never had to come into the town centre, I wouldn't.

"A lot of contractors are coming in and taking money out of the town."

Mr Tomkins' last point is echoed by Ms Scrogham, who said part of the town has "suffered more than most high streets" with the rise and fall in shipbuilding contracts.

"The fact we lost 10,000 jobs back in the 90s had a huge impact on the town centre," she said. When work started to pick up again, the gap was filled by people from outside.

"They'd travel up the M6, work here during the week, and then go back to their families elsewhere," she said.

"All that disposable income went with them and not on the high street in Barrow. That's had a huge detrimental impact - whether it's leisure, retail or hospitality, all those things have been utterly decimated.

"To bring that back again isn't an overnight fix."

Mr Anstiss said that historically "the town's fortunes go up and down in cycles according to the prosperity of the yard", which at any one time has employed 30% to 40% of the local population.

"Everyone has to compete for the right resources, the investment and the infrastructure to deliver a plan as complex as we're tackling - and that's not easy," he admitted.

"But we are in a really strong position. If you were an investor in infrastructure projects of this sort, having a government ministry, BAE Systems and the local authority on board as a consortium to deliver it, that is quite special.

"That's not got a precedent anywhere as far as we know, and it gives us an enormous amount of resources and influence and clout."

Ms Scrogham, who wants to ensure young people who "deserve better" benefit from the regeneration, added: "The nuclear deterrent is a national endeavour. It needs to be delivered by the people of Barrow.

"That's how important it is to the nation. We deliver their first line of defence. That deterrent is the one thing that makes people understand that we are a power within the world.

"We're just now starting to see green shoots in some of the areas. It's such a positive message now that Barrow is rising, that we're seeing those big changes, and it will be back to the town it was."