The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has terminated plans to rationalise its training facilities into a single base at St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.

The £14bn private finance initiative project was to involve building a large defence training college in order to vacate sites elsewhere in the country.

The proposals, which were initiated as part of the Defence Training Rationalisation programme under the last government, had got as far as appointing a preferred bidder to deliver the project.

The Metrix Consortium of Sodexo and Qinetiq, which had wanted to open the Defence Training College in St Athan in 2014, already had outline planning permission for the project.

However, in a written ministerial statement to parliament today, defence secretary Dr Liam Fox said the consortium’s appointment was made subject to it “developing an affordable and value for money contract proposal”.

He said that the procurement process had to be terminated because Metrix had failed to meet these criteria.

On the day on which prime minister David Cameron is set to unveil the Strategic Defence Review, Fox said: “Given the significance of this project and the opportunity to provide a world-class training facility, the Ministry of Defence has worked tirelessly to deliver this project.

“However, it is now clear that Metrix cannot deliver an affordable, commercially-robust proposal within the prescribed period and it has therefore been necessary to terminate the [Defence Training Rationalisation] procurement and Metrix’s appointment as preferred bidder.

“Technical training, collocated on as few sites as possible, remains in our view the best solution for our Armed Forces. Equally, St Athan was previously chosen as the best location on which to collocate that training for good reasons, and we still hope to base our future defence training solution there.

“We will however now carry out some work before finalising the best way ahead, including to confirm both our training and estates requirement, and the best way to structure the solution that will meet them.”

The government now plans to announce its plans for training in early 2010.

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