17/03/2017 Spotlight

Hello, good evening. for the news where you are.

There's hope tonight for the future

of the Royal Marine base in North Devon.

Chivenor employs more than 1,000 personnel and brings

Last November the MoD announced plans to close it,

but on a visit to the base today, the Defence Secretary said

At Chivenor today Michael Fallon saw first hand

what it's like to save a life on the battlefield.

At the same time, the future of the place itself

Speaking four months ago, it looked like a closure was inevitable.

We are getting out of some of the more rural locations,

We want to give everybody a time to explore the various

options for these sites, and Chivenor is a very large site.

The airfield is no longer used, for example, to discuss

the future of the site, with the local community and come up

with the best answer for the Royal Marines

and the best answer for Chivenor itself.

So no done deal on the closure of the base in Chivenor.

I'm very pleased that he said what he said today, about what's

happening, a second chance, if you like.

Michael Fallon made clear the intention is that the

Royal Marines will consolidate in Plymouth, but around

that it seems to me there's a lot of options.

For him not to have ruled out the future use of

RMB Chivenor as a military site is a big step forward.

Business leaders want more clarity on what happens

next for a base that, according to

generates ?40 million a year for the North Devon economy.

If it's not a done deal, then obviously, we need to find out

more about what could possibly happen, because if they are going

to retain part of it, then that could be good.

And then look at development for the rest of it.

If it's all going to move to Plymouth, then we need to look

And it is a big site, with 1200 military personnel

There's been strong campaigning to keep the base open,

but some say a closure is still on the cards.

I think the Secretary of State was making as positive a

noise as he could about working with the local community,

but at the end of the day he's got to deliver the maximum capital

receipt to the public purse, that, I fear will probably

Done deal or not, a decision on the future of this base

Almost 50 years on, the Torrey Canyon remains

one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

The supertanker hit rocks off Cornwall

leaving beaches around the coastline covered in crude oil.

Clare Woodling has been speaking to one of the pilots

who was involved in the efforts to control the disaster.

exploded inside the ship. I have a exploded inside the ship. I have a

very vivid picture in my mind. You could see the side of the ship for

the North and the huge cloud of black smoke and flame coming

shooting out and you must have gone up to about 1000 feet, but I felt as

if it was chasing me along as I was going up was as fast as I could with

my throttle fully open because I really did not want to be caught on

that. We took off from Lossiemouth and as

we got beyond the Scottish border flying south you could see in the

distance a big cloud of black smoke right after about 30,000 feet. It

was the most beautiful spring day. Lots of sunshine, no wind, and this

huge column of smoke going up which got closer and closer as we got down

there. The supertanker had run aground leading crude oil around the

coast and into the sea. Thousands of sea birds died. It remains the worst

environmental disaster in the country. Sir Jonathan maintains that

bombing was the only option. If you want to stop the environmental

disaster occurring you had to accept the risks that there was going to be

damage to the in doing that. So Jonathan says his memories remain

vivid 50 years on. Seeing the petition now he is still able to

remain dispassionate. There was not much emotion to it, it was just the

job that needed to be done. They've been flying the skies

of the South West for decades but today the Royal Navy's Lynx

helicopters began a farewell tour. They were based on Portland

in Dorset before moving to Yeovilton

in the late '90s. The aircraft saw action

in the Falklands and in both Gulf Wars, and today

they retraced their history flying before they're decommissioned

at the end of the month. The joy of this aircraft, and does a

little bit of everything, load lifting, winching, weaponry,

anti-submarine weapons, and the service weapons, it is the eye in

the sky, it is Search and Rescue, it can be troop movement, pretty much

everything. Time now for the weather and David's

here with the forecast. I cannot promise much in the way

of sunshine this weekend, It is relatively mild

and we should see temperatures There is some rain around and it

will be quite breezy but it does Perhaps a little bit

cooler by the time we get Several weather fronts draped

across the northern half with enough moisture to generate

some rain for us, as well. Perhaps, briefly, some brightness,

but not much of that. With a weather front

coming in on Monday, We could end up with

some quite wet weather. And after that goes through,

some slightly colder air. Some spots of light rain

or drizzle overnight tonight, with some of that becoming more

widespread and Brisk westerly winds

and overnight temperatures It is a mild start and generally

a mild day tomorrow, but unfortunately, there is a lot

of cloud, spots of light rain or drizzle in the morning,

gradually easing in the afternoon but not much in the way uprightness

and 12, possibly 13 Celsius Lots of low cloud around, perhaps,

briefly, some brightness but another weather front on Sunday with a top

temperature of 12-13 Celsius. Next week it does

start to cool down. We could have some wet weather

around on Monday, turning showery

and colder on Tuesday. Julia Peet will be back tomorrow

at 5:50pm with all the latest news and sport from

around the South West. But from the Spotlight

late team, goodnight. it is rather breezy. Now for the

national outlook. It was quite a wet day across many

northern and western parts of the UK. This was the view in Lancashire

not so long ago. For the weekend we are looking to see further rain, all

coming from the west, so the further east you are, it should be