MANY new jobs will be created if permission is granted to turn part of a former American air base into a closely-guarded compound to store confidential information.

MANY new jobs will be created if permission is granted to turn part of a former American air base into a closely-guarded compound to store confidential information.

Between 20 and 30 people will be required on site to man the security and look after maintenance if Suffolk Coastal District Council supports the plan unveiled by Infinity at Bentwaters, near Woodbridge.

The company wants to turn 14 hardened shelters into storage units and to erect a triple fence up to nine feet high with an anti-vehicle barrier between the outer and middle fences.

The compound would be built to ''Government List X standards'' and screened from the overall Bentwaters site and runway by new landscaping.

Each shelter has the capacity to take an enormous amount of material and Bentwaters has been chosen as one of a limited number of strategic sites in the UK for storage of information.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds would be spent on adapting the shelters and the company wants to recruit staff from nearby villages to guard the secret material.

There would also be new substations and plant buildings housing standby generators and existing offices would be converted into new offices.

Much of the concrete hardstanding would be taken up and returned to a natural grass surface.

Infinity said the storage would be used by high profile national and multi-national companies who, for business reasons, must operate in a 'low key' secure environment.

The owners of the air base recently unveiled a revised master plan which includes the possibility of turning old aviation buildings into storage vaults for wines, computer data and fireworks.