The answer is obvious, reactivation of some of the 60-odd derelict yards on the Clyde. However, this is impossible as they are all obsolete, small and owned separately. There would be a great duplication involved, and Clyde labour and management practises were obsolete.
The only viable solution is to purchase a suitable number of such yards, clear them, and build a new yard as a Government Dockyard. This yard will have to break with Clyde management and labour practises. This was actually a national aim of the Government, but no way could be found to do this in OTL despite strenuous efforts. Purchasing old derelict yards, clearing and amalgamating their land, and creating a new government (but not RN) yard allows the Admiralty to control the process at Leathers and Beaverbrooks suggestion, and also allows them to import US construction, labour and management practises into a mass production yard.
The yard will rapidly extend beyond small and large monitors and SGB into a vital construction program again based on FFO drivers. By maintaining the UK-Australasia long haul trade, a wartime requirement for fast (16 knot), modern, large cargo-liners is created. These have to have 50% of their holds as reefer space. With turbine blade cutting capability stretched, they have to be motorships. Therefore, the yard has to have a large medium speed diesel plant attached to it to build these diesels. It will take nearly 3 years from the decision to create the yard until the first of these ships appears on the ways.
This storyline has appeared on the France Fights On storyboard
http://francefightson.yuku.com/directory
From what has been said, this was actually looked at.....
The issue of British shipbuilding had been an ongoing nightmare for the government since about 1930. There were far too many small, obsolete yards built from the 1870s onwards. The Depression killed many, but still left such a glut of capacity that they started to pay to close some of them down (IIRC about 1.5 million tons per annum of capacity). In WWII, they looked at re-opening a lot of these old derelict yards. The owners went 'yippee yahoo, the old days are back' and all agreed on the basis of opening their own yards to produce VTE engined 9kt riveted tramp freighters at three times their actual value. A huge bunfight ensued because neither Lord Leathers nor Beaverbrook were interested. The yard owners simply refused to consider using modern management practises, modern construction techniques, or worst of all in their view modern labour management practises (let alone female yard workers!). Beaverbrook could use the labour elsewhere and did so, leaving the Clyde with a surfeit of unemployable middle aged yardworkers without modern skills and who had not been employed in a yard since 1925. Gradually they drifted into ammunition plant work elsewhere and that was that. The only approach possible was to acquire the land, demolish the lot and build greenfield yards. But during 1941-43 the situation was so desperate that there was no 'slack' to actually do any of this. Leathers and Beaverbrook had no effort to spare either, so it all died.
If this had been tried on the Clyde and/or from fresh elsewhere at the same time as the Shadow Aircrfat Factories were being built, what effect would it have on wartime and post war British shipbuilding?