Delivering higher-level skills and improving educational opportunities to drive future growth and prosperity for the UK’s home of submarine building and the wider Cumbrian region will be the focus of a special Royal visit to Barrow.

Her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal will visit BAE Systems – Submarines to tour its Submarine Academy for Skills and Knowledge and the adjacent site where a new dockside University of Cumbria campus is to be created on Wednesday.

Watched by dignitaries and invited guests, the Princess Royal will ceremonially ‘break ground’ on the site where the multi-million-pound campus – Barrow’s first university campus - will take shape, using a shovel made by a team of apprentices from BAE Systems.

Aligned to employers’ needs, the university campus forms part of the Barrow Learning Quarter that also includes a skills hub for sixth form students at Furness College’s Rating Lane site.

As the largest of seven innovative #BrilliantBarrow projects funded by the UK Government’s Towns Fund, Barrow Learning Quarter focuses on transforming educational opportunities and skill building in and for the region.

Developing a full university presence in Barrow will help attract and retain talented graduates to meet the long-term demand for higher-level skills in aligned areas such as computing (including cyber security), business management, supply chain, advanced manufacturing and engineering, along with those required by other sectors operating in the area.

As Patron of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureau, her day will begin by re-opening the Barrow Citizens Advice Bureau at Ramsden Hall in Abbey Road.

She will also visit the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority at the Marine Terminal on Cavendish Dock Road.

Her Royal Highness is no stranger to South Cumbria having last visited the area in September 2019.

As the President of Save the Children since 1970, she visited the shop in Ulverston where she met and chatted with volunteers.

She also went to see the South Lakes Birth Centre at Furness General Hospital in Barrow where she spoke with midwifery staff over the £12 million state-of-the-art unit along with Claire Hensman, the former Lord-Lieutenant of Cumbria and Kathryn Gutteridge, former president of the Royal College of Midwives, of which the Princess is also a patron.

Her Royal Highness is involved with over 300 charities, organisations and military regiments in the UK and overseas, and devotes a large part of her working life to official engagements and visits.