A historic Cumbrian port town is set to undergo a transformation thanks to £200 million of regeneration funding. Like many towns across the north of England, Barrow-in-Furness has been hit hard by the decline of traditional British industry.

The town, which once thrived thanks to its production of iron and steel and bustling port, has since been "plagued by boarded-up shops and broken windows," according to locals. However, the town’s fortunes could be about to transform thanks to an ambitious regeneration project led by a former Cabinet secretary and £200 million of Treasury funds. Simon Case is leading the project named “Team Barrow,” which aims to restore the town to its former glories.

Case said of the town: "It is the living, breathing example of what happened to some industrial towns after the government cut defence spending following the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Barrow-in-Furness has grown to sit at the heart of the British defence industry, with the mammoth BAE Systems factory working to provide Britain and its allies with state of the art technology that will play a pivotal role in defence over the coming decades.

Its work on submarines will bolster the UK’s continuous at-sea deterrence and will also be sold to Australia as part of the Aukus agreement, which sees the country partner with the UK and US to work collaboratively in defence capability.

The surge in orders will see BAE Systems add to their workforce, which in turn will significantly grow the town’s 60,000 population.

Of the role it plays in defence, Case said: “With the pressure that we've got on getting the Astute boats finished, then Dreadnought and then Aukus, we started to focus on this two years ago for almost Bournville-like reasons.”

Bournville is the model village close to Birmingham that was built as housing for the workers of the Cadbury’s factory.

He added: “The town is a strategic national asset, although it hasn’t always been viewed that way.

“Pretty quickly, we realised we needed Team Barrow to create an environment that would deliver that happy, skilled workforce we need to support the defence nuclear enterprise... Thanks to Mr Putin and Mr Xi, the business case makes itself!”

The initiative will see local council and the government work in conjunction with BAE Systems who currently employ one in three of the town’s residents.

The development will see a new 800 home development built on a brownfield site close to the dockyard, as well as a high-tech training centre.

All of this is a reason to be optimistic about the future of the town situated at the doorstep of the Lake District.

He said: "If you go back to the Bournville example, that tells you of a time when prosperous towns had these partnerships between government and industry, and they produced magnificent structures like the town hall.

"We are now getting investors who are starting to say, 'Hey, this looks like a town with a future.'"