Approval has been granted for a proposed £13 billion military academy at St Athan – a project being hailed as the biggest single public investment in Wales.
The Defence Technical College (DTC) will come up on a 1,000-acre site at a former air base and construction is expected to begin late next year.
Councillors in the Vale of Glamorgan gave planning permissions for the project which will create thousands of jobs in the area.
The academy, when completed, will be the country’s largest vocational training operation. It will provide specialist non-combat training for all three services and house up to 3,000 students at a time.
Metrix, a consortium led by the former Government-owned defence research agency Qinetiq, was named by the Ministry of Defence in 2007 as the preferred bidder for the contract.
Its chairman Charles Barrington said: “It is truly a win-win situation for all the stakeholders involved in this nationally important project.”
The academy would be a development the size of a small town and would have “all the facilities that would be expected of a small town”, the group said.
