SWAN Hunter will find out in weeks whether work on the Royal Navy's £4bn aircraft carrier programme will be coming to the North-East.

The Tyneside shipbuilder is attending a meeting with the alliance behind the CVF project, which includes the Ministry of Defence, BAE Systems, Thales UK and Kellogg, Brown and Root UK.

Swan's carrier project director John Mitchell said: "At the moment, we have no idea how they are going to do it or which companies are going to be involved."

Reports in the national Press over the weekend said that construction of the ships will be divided between four shipyards - BAE Systems' yards on the Clyde, BAE's submarine works at Barrow-in-Furness, VT Group, at Southampton, and Babcock, at Rosyth.

However, aerospace and defence group BAE Systems said yesterday that no announcement had been made about who would get the work.

A spokesperson said: "Nothing has been decided. The project is still under discussion."

Early in 2003, Swan Hunter was one of four shipbuilders defence bosses said were in the running to build the two carriers. Work was due to start in 2008 and was expected to create about 3,000 jobs at its yard in Wallsend, North Tyneside, as well as sustaining at least another 8,000 in the wider supply chain.

Mr Mitchell said a lot had changed during the past two-and-a-half years. "We just don't know now who will be the prime and sub-contractors. We are being told that the whole CVF build strategy is under review.

"Hopefully, at this meeting, we are going to be told more about it. I presume that anybody who wants to be involved in the building will be at the meeting."

Swan's has been under pressure recently, as work nears completion on two Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels. Month by month, its workforce of 800 is being reduced. Last month, the company signed a deal with Dutch company NV Ecodock to set up a shipbreaking operation at Wallsend, which will safeguard about 250 jobs.

Mr Mitchell said: "The shipbreaking is not going to create the thousands of jobs that shipbuilding would. We need to get some new build work."