RNLI's plans for a boat-building facility that could save the charity £3.7m per year have been approved by Poole council.

The facility, costing an estimated £11.2m, will create 90 new jobs and allow the RNLI to build and maintain its own all-weather lifeboats in-house. It will be built on land already owned by the RNLI at its Poole headquarters in Dorset. 

Paul Boissier, RNLI chief executive, said: "We need to make the best use of all donations we receive, so once we saw the benefits of bringing the work in-house, and as there are fewer and fewer boat-builders able to work to our very specific requirements, we knew we had to go ahead – even in the current economic climate. We’ll be our own customer and so have a 'guaranteed order book' – planning for our lifeboat requirements means we’ll need to build six new all-weather lifeboats annually for the next 20 years."

The RNLI is the second largest charity by fundraising income, after Cancer Research UK, having raised £142.1m through voluntary income in its last reported year (see the Directors of Fundraising Survey for more details). In order to fund this project, however, the charity has made savings of £6.2m. This time last year the charity announced it would be making 41 of its employees redundant, citing the tough economic climate for organisations relying on public donations. Boissier said the remaining £5m to fund the project would come from targetted fundraising. 

Some 32 per cent of the charity's annual spend is on operational maintenance (around £45m). Boissier said the fundraising "must succeed because being unsure of our future lifeboat supply is not an option". 

"We need tight control of production over the long term," he said. 

The plans received unanimous approval from the Borough of Poole Planning Committee after amending the proposal to alleviate some concerns. The RNLI already designs its all-weather lifeboats and produces its inshore lifeboats in a facility on the Isle of Wight, which will remain open. 

Several old buildings will now be cleared from the Poole site to make way for the new centre. The first phase of operations, including all-weather lifeboat refit and overhaul is scheduled for spring 2014. Production of all-weather lifeboat hulls is scheduled to begin by 2019.