by holdthefrontpage staff
The South Wales Echo has claimed a campaign victory, with the announcement that a new £14bn military training academy is to be based at RAF St Athan in south Wales.
Defence secretary Des Browne yesterday announced that the site in the Vale of Glamorgan had been chosen with preferred bidder status for the first stage of the programme awarded to the Metrix consortium - answering months of calls from the Trinity Mirror paper.
And it quickly brought the good news - and the prospect of a resulting 5,000 jobs - to readers, in a special late city final edition published after the 12.30pm announcement, more than an hour after the Echo's usual city final deadline.
How the Echo broke the news
Journalist Nick Machin, who co-ordinated the campaign with reporter Peter Collins, said: "We are absolutely delighted that it is coming to south Wales."
More than 3,600 readers had signed campaign coupons printed in the Echo, with hundreds more completing an online petition on its website icWales, all taken to 10 Downing Street by Peter.
Nick added: "There has been a lot of hard work on our part and lots of support from readers."
He also took the fight to the Wales TUC Conference in North Wales, where he told delegates how important it was that the academy came to St Athan.
It had been one of two sites considered for the building of the new academy to provide training for all the British forces, with RAF Cosford in Shropshire also in the running.
As the announcement was made in the House of Commons, the Echo received praised from Vale of Glamorgan MP John Smith, who said he was grateful to the paper and readers for their support.
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