What is Greenham Trust? Our reporter looks at the unique business and charitable organisation that supports countless causes in West Berkshire and North Hampshire

An abandoned military base, once the home of cruise missiles, provided the fertile ground on which a huge charitable trust has been able to spring up and nurture a myriad invaluable community initiatives.

The purchase and development of the Greenham Common facility in 1997 for public good was the start.

Since then, Greenham Trust has established itself as an important local institution, but not everyone is aware of how it makes the money that it uses to support so many community organisations and charities in the Newbury area.

I spoke to the trust’s chief executive Chris Boulton about the its origins, how it operates day to day and what the future holds for the one-of-a-kind organisation.

The military air base, used by the United States Air Force for much of the 20th Century and infamous for its housing of nuclear weapons and the resulting women's peace camp protests, closed in 1992.

A few years later a group of local businessmen, led by Sir Peter Michael, owner of Donnington Valley Hotel and Spa, banded together to buy it.

The objective was simple but revolutionary, and it is an idea that has benefitted local people for decades.

Most of the land would be given back to the public as common land, as it was before the airbase was established, while 150 acres would be retained and developed into units to let to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

In 1997, with the help of a bank loan, the land was purchased for £7.5m and the Greenham Common Community Trust was born.

The trust collects the rent, factors in the cost of managing and developing the site, and then uses the surplus funds to support community work throughout West Berkshire and North Hampshire.

Chris said that the charitable commercial property model at Greenham Business Park is unique. At its inception, the trust was only able to give away a few tens of thousands of pounds each year. Now, Greenham Trust gives between £3m to £5m in grants annually. Since 1997, it has distributed more than £85m.

It spreads its funds to a wide array of local charities and community organisations, no matter their size. The only things it does not support are individuals and animal charities.

The list of those that have benefitted from the trust is endless. Notable ones include Newbury Soup Kitchen, Loose Ends drop-in centre, West Berks Foodbank, Berkshire Youth and West Berks Mencap. Others who’ve been helped include Swings and Smiles, supporting play for disabled children; Dingley’s Promise, helping families with children under-five with special needs; and youth counselling service Time to Talk.

Greenham Trust is a massive supporter of the arts too. Along with Arts Council England, it underwrites the Corn Exchange, and it helps finance The Watermill Theatre and several of its creative outreach programmes.

It also supports several local sports clubs with a big focus on inclusivity, getting everyone involved in sport. Walking football and cricket for the partially sighted are two examples. The trust is keen to support groups that get children active in sport as well as people with learning difficulties and physical disabilities.

The fund donated half a million pounds to help build Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital’s new chemotherapy unit which opens this summer, just one of the many large-scale projects the trust has donated to over the years.

Despite these headline-grabbing donations and showings of support, Chris said that the real “lifeblood” of the trust is its community grants.

These are often only a sum of a few thousand pounds and they are given to small groups or clubs who need a bit of financial support to keep going.

Examples include Alzheimer’s self-help groups, kids’ holiday clubs and a volunteer group that tracks the different types of birds on Greenham Common. The trust has also supported at least 120 village hall projects, with these ranging from small kitchen refurbishment projects to entire rebuilds.

Chris said: “The main focus in everything is always about the community. It really is about improving the lives of people within West Berkshire and North Hampshire.”

He led a successful career in commercial property as a chartered surveyor and joined Greenham Trust as chief executive in 2014. He describes it as “the perfect job”.

“I often say to people that it is more than a job for me”, he added. “On any given day, in the morning I could be having a meeting with a potential tenant looking to relocate.

“In the afternoon, I could be sitting with a local charity who’s got some significant issues with some programme they want to run or they have just had some funding withdrawn or they’ve got a bigger demand for their services. That is very fulfilling.”

When Chris joined the total value of the assets owned by the trust was around £45. It has now grown to between £120m and £130m. A major factor of this growth was the large-scale redevelopment programme of Greenham Business Park which began in 2018.

He said: “When I arrived in 2014, it still looked like an old airbase. You recognise it today as a fully-fledged, proper commercial business park.

“My remit as CEO over my 10, nearly 11-year time here, is to grow the asset base and income stream because the charitable need doesn’t go away. In fact, it gets bigger.”

Chris noted the strain that the pandemic and the cost of living crisis had put on some parts of the community and comes into contact with people who are having the hardest time in the local area. But all that does is spur him and the rest of the trust on to keep fighting the good fight.

He said: “You see the sad side of life. What homelessness can do to an individual, what poverty can do to a family and what physical disabilities can do to people as well..

“On the positive side, we know we are creating value and creating an income stream that can help.”