RAF St. MAWGAN

[Chough]

On December 1st Cornwall County Council is due to take over the running of the airfield including ATC from the RAF. Today at almost literally the last minute the County Council has announced they will not be ready to take over for a further three weeks and have urgently appealed to the military to come to their rescue for this interim period. In the last few minutes the BBC have posted details on their website confirming that the RAF are unable to help and hence it appears the airfield will close for three weeks.

You couldn't really make it up, could you? Never underestimate the ability of a County Council - particularly Cornwall - to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Local TV tonight referred to the Council having had four years to prepare for taking over the facilities at the airfield. A County Councillor described it as unfortunate but not a disaster

It seems it has been too big a task for the County Council with its 22000 staff led by its new £200K a year Chief Exec.

Looking ahead, many locals have memories of St. Mawgan going back decades. The extensive facilities there with several useful hangars including the large modern structure used for Nimrod maintenance and later for Sea Kings is surely crying out for a new role, there is plenty of parking, the HAS site as well as the relatively large domestic site all surely are deserving of a future role probably outside the military orbit.

I read with interest the recent comments on Macrihanish, any pruners out threre got any ideas on the way ahead for St. Mawgan?

I appreciate, that for the moment the Maritime Facility and SERE are still at the Station. But for how long?

And what about the gorgeous Shackelton gate guard?

[petoprobe]

Tell me about it I work there.

[danieloakworth]

This project has been one long screw up and the companies involved should be ashamed of their inability to deliver within the timescales. However, to be at least a little fair, this has not been last minute it has been obvious for some time that the final CAA approval would be right up against the 1st december deadline. Glad the RAF have pulled out, might save a few souls having to work Xmas should the deadline slip again.

[Grabbers]

You couldn't make it up! Local government, can't beat it!

[Lurking123]

Not just local councils. Being a little parochial, anyone remember the Boscombe Down ATC fiasco in 1990?:bored:

Let me refresh.

Organisation A lost the contract and was given x months notice. Company B won the contract and part of the deal was that organisation A would train company B's controllers. Three days or so before handover, everyone threw their hands in the air and said "too difficult" (I wonder why :bored:). Anyway, a bit of frantic HQ MATO activity later, a motley bunch of RAF controllers get sent in over the weekend. 18 years later they are still there under a so-called "Value For Money" role.

[Grabbers]

What are the odds on RAF St Mawgan remaining open until the new year?

[whowhenwhy]

Hmmm - the download that I got was that we were there TFN. Cornwall CC needs a LOT of money to bring the airfield and services up to scratch and can't afford it coz they're broke. They've not employed anyone to take the place of the light blue suiters that are there, which in all fairness should have been apparent quite some time ago when no-one pitched up to start scoping what needed to be done.

[Foxy Loxy]

BBC NEWS | England | Cornwall | Air traffic delay stops flights (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7750133.stm)

This may (or may not) answer some questions.

[L1A2 discharged]

Fairly typical of the incompetents who spend our council tax here. :ugh:

Already missed one target date.:mad:

Only had 4 years to prepare, given that, I would consider that they do not have the co-ordination required to be onanists.

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Glad the RAF have pulled out


Agreed - but how long will this brave stand last? If the CC think their beloved airport is going to close for three weeks, they will start bleating about impact on business/tourism to whoever in Government will listen, and I fear that whoever in the RAF decided to pull out will be 'asked ' to 'revisit' their decision...

[Raven30]

RAF St Mawgan is not closing. The airfield, however, will be transferred to the Council from DLA on 1 December as scheduled.

I cannot envisage a last minute change of decision by the MOD. As was mentioned in the MOD press release, the RAF personnel currently employed at St Mawgan have other posts to fill. There have already been extensions granted to the Council and RAF personnel have had their careers / personal lives etc put on hold more than once already. Bear in mind that its not just those in post at St Mawgan that are affected, it has a knock on effect throughout the branch.

[cornish-stormrider]

and with their bow ties a spinnin, Cornwall County Council will carry on and screw up.............................next ( insert project of choice)

What many of you don't know is that RAF Holiday Camp West is in the borough of restormel council. They are the local authority with CCC over them on more strategic screw up's. Restormel are reknown throughout the land as the most crooked and incompetent going. I have spoken with workers of many engineering and construction firms and they all say that they avoid Restormel like the plague. Twas hinted to me that planning decisions are based on envelopes, brown, plain, stuffed with BBT (big beer tokens).

It would not suprise me at all to find restormel's hand in this snafu.....

[danieloakworth]

Stormrider, personally I'd remove your last as being a bit too close to slander.

The truth of the story is simple, the navaids provider have failed to get their equipment cerified in time. They have had huge problems writing safety cases that CAA would accept. Once all the paperwork has been completed CAA will visit the site and give it the final once over (including some technical checks on the kit). Then they go home to Gatwick and issue the letter clearing the kit for us. I believe the date for their visit will be around the 18th/19th december. So if (and that's quite a big if) the job has been done propoerly then 19th should be good. Wouldn't be at all surprised to see the airport going live minus some bits of kit.

[spheroid]

RAF St Mawgan is not closing


Its sort of closing though isn't it..... I mean..the MATZ has gone.... you can't get any fuel there....and the feeder has closed....so, although technically the RAF flag may fly from the rusty yard arm....its not really an RAF airfield is it.....

[Raven30]

Correct, as from Monday there will no longer be an RAF airfield at St Mawgan. However, the domestic site remains and that is still known as RAF St Mawgan. Purely pedantic I know, but true!

The MATZ has not gone, for a couple of days anyway, and you can get fuel, you just have to go north side to the civilian terminal, and there never was a feeder! More pedantry!

One of the RAFs best bases in my opinion, and I am sorry to see it go.

[Tim McLelland]

For once, I think the RAF/MoD have done the right thing by basically telling the Council to get stuffed. After all these years, the RAF's been treated as a convenient money-spinner and after the way in which the JSF saga was handled, I think they've done the right thing by just walking away. It's a terrible shame to lose such a big and well-equipped airfield in a strategic position, but in some respects it would be quite gratifying if the airfield closed completely and the Council lost a whole lot of cash - it would serve them right.

[Capot]

Stormrider, personally I'd remove your last as being a bit too close to slander

A statement is only slander if untrue.

So I wouldn't worry too much.

The great Mike Robertson (Trago Mills) wrote about Restormel Council frequently in terms much more explicit and perjorative than in this thread, in a paragraph at the top of Trago's full-page adverts. We miss his missives deeply. His bete noir was the Restormel Planning Department which was notoriously corrupt, and probably still is. Somehow they never thought a case against him would be worthwhile; see the sentence above, ending "if untrue". Mike knew where the skeletons were buried, and the Council knew he knew.

In contrast, Cornwall CC is probably simply totally incompetent rather than crooked, ignoring the daily, endemic minor corruption in all Local Authorities, and has joined a large number of Councils in finding out that paying huge salaries, bonuses and, eventually of course large pay-offs for failure, to recycled time-servers in senior positions from other Local Authorities achieves nothing except a waste of shed-loads of ratepayers' funds.

[Tim McLelland]

I'd be reluctant to drag "Mr .Trago Mills" into this saga - he's not exactly a bastion of the moral high ground... but that's another story.;)

[nimboboy]

Hi to you all, Well thats it, RAF St Mawgan ( the active side) has closed for ever, the last flight Swallow 469A, a Dash 8 from Air South West took off from runway 12 at 22.40hrs 30th Nov 2008 enroute Plymouth::{, now its up to the :mad: CCC to make Newquay ( should still be St Mawgan, its not in bloody Newquay) work, gonna be interesting, as, if you put them all in a bag you would have a hell of a job to pull out a good one:E all the best to any body going to work for them.

[Vie sans frontieres]

Cornwall Country Council taking over St.Mawgan must surely be another step on the road to independence. After all, they do claim to be a different nation, do they not? All they need now is the world to wake up and realise the usefulness of tin and there'll be no stopping them. :ok:

[wannabe87]

Not all of us cornish folk have that attitude you know! :}

[L1A2 discharged]

The re-opening has been delayed due to groundworks on the runoff areas, not smooth enough for the CAA.

Seemed to be acceptable when it was an MDA and we had half the worlds pax in due to fog everywhere else.

Oh, and another thing .. the delay in preparing for the CAA certification was due to time limits imposed on contractors by the RAF :mad: allegedly. Poxy politicians.


Still, its nice and quiet without those pesky passenger craft about.

[Tim McLelland]

I find that hard to believe. When I last spoke to aircrew at SM (before they left) they said they had to bend over backwards to fit everything around civil operations, so it seems a bit unlikely that they would put any restrictions on civil contractors. More like the dumb council trying to shift blame again methinks.

[Avtur]

Had a fantastic start to my flying career in 1986 and the best days of my life flying for "the third division south". Moving from Donny to Newquay was all part of the early adult-hood education which helped.

We always had to do the dets that ISK were unable to as we had the best ground crew that the Nimrod fleet could offer, and a leadership that insisted on work hard, play hard (RC). Fantastic.

Sad to leave it in 1992 when we gave up the newly surfaced 9000 x 300 ft runway to the runway-hungry Sea King fleet. Hope there was also a leaving doo for the table tennis club who had the luxury of utilizing all the newly build HASs.

THANKS to all you Newquay folk: You were ( and still are) the kindest and most easy going people that I have, to date, lived among. Best wishes and hope RBC don't **** up this opporunity????.

Tim. If you are the TM I once had knew as a NLF guy then best wishes.