German yard intelligence brought British escorts forward

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement gave British observers access to German programmes and yards as well as a temporary political bargain. Reports exposed a large mismatch between Plan Z's announced force and the infrastructure available to build it. British planners treated that basic planning failure as evidence that German strategy might also abandon a rational construction timetable. They therefore revived and finalized escort concepts rather than waiting for the rest of the replacement fleet. Hunt-class destroyers and Flower-class corvettes entered orders and construction before the war, making them accelerated pre-war precautions rather than designs improvised only after the Atlantic crisis began.