The principle governance committee for Astute is the Deterrent and Underwater Programme Board which is charged with ensuring that all of the defence lines of development will be delivered. This Committee is chaired by Cdre Beverstock and attended by key stakeholders from the DE&S delivery teams, Naval Command and the Nuclear Safety Regulator. Its key responsibilities are:
- to develop the plans for the delivery of deterrent capability across all Defence Lines of Development, including submarine, weapons system, warhead, C4, infrastructure, personnel, and training, and measures to ensure continued delivery of Continuous at Sea Deterrence by the Vanguard Class up until the handover to Successor;
- to develop and maintain the plans for delivery of Underwater Warfare capability including submarine, weapons system, C4, infrastructure, personnel, and training, to ensure the delivery of submarines at high readiness; and
- to consider balance of investment issues across the programme and optimize the allocation of resource (financial/non-financial) to ensure the efficient and timely delivery of the required capability, endorse project business cases and agree funded and unfunded risk levels/exposure.
Cdre Beverstock also chairs the Anti Submarine Warfare Programme Board which has similar responsibilities for that capability. Beneath the two programme boards, individual projects will run their own project boards to review progress against the performance, time and cost boundaries. These boards would normally be chaired by the respective project team leader with Cdre Beverstock or his representative attending. Functional or organisational boards (eg the Defence Nuclear Regulatory Committee and the Submarine Operating Centre Executive Board) are attended on the same basis.
Beyond programme governance, the capability area of the Ministry of Defence has responsibility for identifying long term military capability requirements. In this capacity, Cdre Beverstock chairs the Deterrent and Underwater Capability Management Group, various Technical Programme exchange agreements with the US Navy and attends the UK/France Submarine Steering Group.
Above the programme and capability groups, pan MOD capability prioritisation decisions are taken by the Joint Capabilities Board. When matters relevant to his capability areas are discussed Cdre Beverstock would be expected to attend. Similarly, the Investment Approvals Committee provides the final authorisation for investment decisions and Cdre Beverstock would attend where appropriate. The Defence Board is ultimately responsible for agreeing budgetary allocations made through the Department's planning round. Cdre Beverstock would not routinely be required to attend the Board for those discussions but his views would be represented by Vice Admiral Lambert.