Green light for control tower bid

The news comes after West Berkshire Council announced last year that it was going to sell the former United States Air Force (USAF) tower, which directed military aircraft at the airbase during the height of the nuclear stand-off between NATO and the Soviet Union.
The control tower, situated off the Bury’s Bank Road, has been derelict since the Americans left the base at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
The parish council's bid will be carried out under the Government’s Community Right to Bid scheme, part of the Localism Act which allows community groups to purchase facilities that are important to them.
The parish council now has six months to raise the necessary funds to place a bid on the tower. During this period, West Berkshire council cannot sell the tower to anyone else, although it does not have to accept Greenham's offer either.
Parish councillors were supported in their decision by former Thatcham town councillor, Jerry Scarr, who said he would be all for Greenham taking control of the building and enthusiasm to buy the tower was expressed by district and parish councillor Julian Swift-Hook, who said: “There is a better than average chance this will work and I think we should do it.”
However, the clerk to the parish council, John Boston, said the parish council would be in uncharted territory as the Localism Act is not yet very clear on what happens after a decision to bid is made.
Mr Boston explained that there would be no penalty if the parish council pulled out of the scheme and said there was a plan in place to secure funding for the bid.
But clouds of uncertainty surround the issue as the tower’s current owner, West Berkshire Council, has not said how much it intends to sell the tower for, along with the amount of land included in the sale.
The Chairman of the parish council, Tony Forward, compared it to “going to buy a house with a blindfold on.”
The council was very critical of West Berkshire Council pushing for a sale of the tower while at the same time it was giving away 5.5 acres of public land, valued at £3.9m for the Market Street development.
Mr Forward said: “The council justify the give-away of very expensive real estate in Newbury given the claimed benefit to the community but when Greenham PC attempt to acquire the old control tower for the benefit of the community, it is subject of a market value sale of the property.
“The developer is an experienced property developer, which one assumes is cash rich, where the converse is true of Greenham Parish Council.
“It’s like the royal family being obsessed with getting some money for the dilapidated shed at the bottom of the garden for the gardener who wants to acquire it for his work, yet are happy to give away the crown jewels to a wealthy land owner.”
The Leader of West Berkshire Council, Gordon Lundie, said that people had been making a comparison between the council making no charge for the land to be developed in Market Street, which he said was part of a multi-million pound development with significant local benefit, and then suggesting that it made no charge for the control tower.
“Giving away the tower would be a loss of an asset for no benefit and we could only make no charge for the control tower if there was significant community benefit to be gained,” he said.
However, Mr Lundie said he would interested to see what the parish council could offer.
A spokeswoman for West Berkshire council, Peta Stoddart-Crompton, said that the tower would be put on the market soon and that sale information would be available once this was done.
Parish councillors unanimously voted to bid for the building, which could be turned into a museum if the process is successful.